Is Your Doctor Listening to You?

Information may not be reliable

Our patients’ concerns are what drive the conversation behind their treatment, and these methods allow our team to gather insight and help women make informed decisions about their bodies. Our model is different, and research confirms it. 

A new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine revealed that on average, patients have 11 seconds to tell their doctor what’s wrong before being interrupted — and that’s not all.1 “Our results suggest that we are far from achieving patient-centered care,” says lead study author Naykky Singh Ospina, Assistant Professor of Endocrinology at the University of Florida. Her team analyzed 112 clinical encounters between doctors and patients at various clinics across the U.S. to determine whether patients are able to set the agenda during doctor visits.

The results of the study showed that:

Only 36% of patients were given the opportunity to describe the reason for their visit and express concerns up front; of those patients, seven out of ten were interrupted, on average within 11 seconds of them starting to speak.

Specialists provided even less opportunity for patients to set the agenda, with only 20 percent of patients being asked to describe their situation – however, according to study authors, the introductory step of agenda setting might have been skipped because they already know why the patient was referred.

The researchers proposed three possible reasons for this concerning pattern, including time constraints, not enough training on how to communicate with patients, and burnout were suggested by researchers. 

Read more: https://vivaeve.com/is-your-doctor-listening-to-you/