Why is Improving Patient Communications Important?

Clinician - Patient communications is the foundation of the medical relationship. We know that patient diagnosis is made 70% of the time from the patient's history. (Patterson MC, et al Contributions of the history physical examination, and laboratory investigation in making medical diagnosis. Western J Med. 1992 156:163-5.)

Patients are more satisfied when they feel all of their concerns have been addressed. (Stewart M, et al. Patient Centered Interviewing, Part III: Five provocative questions. Can Fam. Physicians 35:159-161,1989.)

Litigation is lower among clinicians who have good communication skills. (Lester GW and Smith SG. Listening and Talking to patients: A remedy for malpractice suits? West. J. Med. 158:268-272,1993.)

In one study the physician interrupted 69% of interviews within the first 18 seconds of the interview. (Beckman HB and Frankel RF The effect of Provider behavior on the collection of data Annals of Int. Med 101:692-696, 1984)

In 77% of these interviews, patient's reason for coming to the physician were not fully elicited (Ref. above)

In JAMA, Levinson et al discovered that primary care physicians who had never had a malpractice suit spent on average 3.3 minutes more with their patients. These physicians also had a more patient centered interviewing style and used humor.

Effective communication skills reduces malpractice risk. 71% of patients stated poor relationships as a reason for their malpractice claims. (Levinson W, Physician-patient communication. A key to malpractice prevention. JAMA 1994 Nov 23-30;272(20):1619-20 )

When patients are asked to discuss their illness and it's treatment immediately after leaving their physician's office, they are able to correctly identify only about 50% of the critical information. (Cohen-Cole SAet al. Psychiatry for internists: A study of needs. J Operational Psychiatry 1982; 13:100-105.)

About 50% of patients do not know what medications they are supposed to take. (Hulka BS, et al: Medication use and misuse: Physician-Patient discrepancies. J Chronic Dis. 1975; 28:7-21.)

Hundreds of studies indicate that between 22 - 72% of patients do not follow their doctor's recommendations. (Sackett DL, Snow JC: The magnitude of compliance and noncompliance, in Haynes R, Taylor D, Sackette DL (eds): Compliance in Health Care. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.)

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