There has been an increase in teaching aimed at improving the physician-patient relationship in conjunction with teaching the medical interview. Unconscious, unrecognized responses of a trainee to a patient may explain failure of the trainee to use newly acquired knowledge on interviewing. (Author/MLW)

Addresses the impact of patients' beliefs about health care on their decisions to follow medical advice and to undertake different actions to prevent illness. Concludes that among other things, doctors need to become more willing to modify their treatment plans according to patient needs. (VLC)

Describes major uses of film, television, and video in mental health field and discusses problems in selection, acquisition, cataloging, indexing, storage, transfer, care of tapes, patients' rights, and copyright. A sample patient consent form for media recording, borrower's evaluation sheet, sources of audiovisuals and reviews, and 35 references…

A patient interaction course designed to provide an introductory experience to the gross anatomy laboratory and to the interview and physical examination settings is described. The patient interaction course is composed of a series of four experiences: anatomy laboratory sessions, interviews, physical examinations, and small group discussions.…

An exercise was devised at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London, to facilitate medical students' ability to discuss death and dying with cancer patients. Students begin with a written situation to problem-solve and then move into pairs and groups to reach a consensus and discuss the problem. A videotaped simulation is also used. (JMD)

A study of medical college faculty perceptions of the value of two groups of patients admitted to a teaching hospital 15 years apart suggests that changes in patient populations resulting from economic changes may have diminished the educational value of medical inpatients in academic settings. (MSE)

Examination of interaction between hospital staff and nonnative speakers of English touches on institutionalized models of interaction and attempts to characterize typical exchanges at various points during patient processing. Results show that communication difficulties can arise both intra- and cross-culturally, primarily from differentiated…

Discusses the barriers created when communication breaks down between physicians and poor patients, a failure generally resulting from inadequately shared information and a power asymmetry in the relationship. Suggests strategies for improving communication with poor patients, including improving listening and responding skills, avoiding jargon,…

Responses of 84 psychiatrists who completed a questionnaire as they thought a mentally healthy adolescent of their gender would respond compared well to 140 actual responses, but comparison of 61 psychiatrists' responses to responses of 70 disturbed patients showed that psychiatrists viewed these adolescents as more psychopathological than their…

In this study we examine medical interview asymmetry using the expectation states approach. Physicians lead clinical interviews because of a feature inherent in those interviews, namely the status difference between doctor and patient. This power differential varies: it is greatest when the biomedical aspects of the interview are emphasized. These…

This study focused on a population of 36 female patients, aged 25 to 65, who were diagnosed with intellectual disabilities, all of whom had long-standing patterns of inappropriate behaviors. In an attempt to increase more appropriate behaviors in these patients, a set of standardized contingency rules were established. These rules were implemented…

Gerontologic research in the past 40 years has shown that caring for an older, disabled person affects the health and well-being of the caregiver. This important contribution led to a wide range of programs and services designed to buffer caregivers from the effects of stressors. Many of these programs have been quite innovative. Although…

A high prevalence of deficits in explicit learning has been reported for schizophrenic patients, but it is less clear whether these patients are impaired in implicit learning. Deficits in implicit learning indicative of a fronto-striatal dysfunction have been reported using a serial reaction-time task (SRT), but the impact of typical neuroleptic…

The author, after a review of the relevant literature, found that depression and the risk for suicide remain unacceptably underrecognized in primary care (PC). The negative consequences are substantial for patients and their physicians. Suicide prevention in PC begins with the recognition of depression because suicide occurs largely during…

To perform well on any challenging task, it is necessary to evaluate your performance so that you can learn from errors. Recent theoretical and experimental work suggests that the neural sequellae of error commission in a dorsal anterior cingulate circuit index a type of contingency- or reinforcement-based learning, while activation in a rostral…