The purpose of this project was to assess if providing physicians (house staff) with routine comprehensive social history information on their patients will improve patient outcomes. Comprehensive social history information was gathered over a S-month period on 134 consecutive patients. Patients were randomized to have social history information provided or not provided to the resident physician caringfor them. Outcomes of interest were: patient satisfaction, length of stay, and early unplanned readmission. Analysis was with analysis of covariance, controlling for patient severity of illness and amount of social history information documented by the house officer Outcomes were the same for patients for whom house staff were provided social history information versus those for whom the information was not provided. The authors conclude that providing house staff with routine comprehensive social history information did not influence patient outcomes.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Ashton, C. M.
, Kuykendall, D. H., Johnson, M. L., Wray, N. P., & Wu, L. (1995). The association between the quality of inpatient care and early readmission. Annals of Internal Medicine, 122,415-421.
2.
Ashton, C. M.
, Kuykendall, D. H., Johnson, M. L., Wun, C. C., Wray, N. P., Carr, M. J., Slater, C. H., Wu, L., & Bush, G. R. (1994). A method of developing and weighting explicit process of care criteria for quality assessment. Medical Care, 32, 755-770.
3.
Bates, B.
(1983). A guide to physical examination (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
4.
Blumgart, H. L.
(1964). Caring forthe patient. New England Journal of Medicine, 270,449-457.
5.
Bucher, H. C.
(1994). Social support and prognosis following first myocardial infarction. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 9, 409-417.
6.
Burns, R.
, & Nichols, L. O. (1991). Factors predicting readmission of older general medicine patients. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 6, 389-393.
7.
Cohen, J.
(1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ:. Lawrence Erlbaum.
8.
DeGowin, E.
, & DeGowin, R. (1981). Beside diagnostic examination (4th ed.). New York: Macmillan.
9.
Fleming, C.
, Fisher E. S., Chan, C. H., Bubolz, T. A., & Malenka, D. J. (1992). Studying outcomes and hospital utilization in the elderly. The advantage of a merged data base for medicare and veterans affairs hospitals. Medical Care, 30, 377-391.
10.
Garrity, T. E.
(1981). Medical compliance and the clinician patient relationship: A review. Social Science and Medicine, 15E, 215-222.
11.
Goldberg, R. J.
, & Novack, D. H. (1992). The psychosocial review of systems. Social Science and Medicine, 35, 261-266.
12.
Greco, P. J.
, &Eisenberg, J. M. (1993). Changing physician's practices. New England Journal of Medicine, 329, 1271-1273
13.
Griffith, C. H.
, Haist, S. A., Wilson, J. F., & Rich, E. C. (1996). house staff social history knowledge: Correlation with evaluation of interpersonal skills. Evaluation and the Health Professions, 19, 81-90.
14.
Griffith, C. H.
, Rich, E. C., & Wilson, J. F. (1995). house staff knowledge of their patient's social history. Academic Medicine, 70, 64-66.
15.
Hall, J. A.
, Roter, D. L., & Katz, N. R. (1988). Meta-analysis of correlation of provider behaviors in medical encounters. Medical Care, 26, 657-675.
16.
Holleman, D. R.
, & Simel, D. L. (1996). Effectiveness of automatic diagnostic test result feedback in outpatient laboratory and radiology testing in veterans: A controlled trial. Medical Care, 34, 857-861.
17.
Knaus, W. A.
, Wagner, D. P., Draper, E. A., Zimmerman, J. E., Bergner, M., Bastos, P. G., Sirio, C. A., Murphy, D. M., Lotring, T., Damiano, M. S., & Harrell, F. E. (1991). The APACHE III prognostic system. Risk prediction of hospital mortality for critically ill hospitalized adults. Chest, 100, 1619-1630.
18.
Lee, T. H.
, Pearson, S. D., Johnson, P. A., Johnson, P. A., Garcia, T. B., Weisberg, M. C., Guadanoli, E., Cook, F., & Goldman, L. (1995). Failure of information as an intervention to modify clinical management in a time-series trial in patients with acute chest pain. Annals of Internal Medicine, 122, 434-437.
19.
Linden, W.
, Stossel, C., Maurice, J. (1996). Psychosocial intervention for patients with coronary artery disease. A meta-analysis. Archives of Internal Medicine, 156, 745-752.
20.
Matthews, D. A.
, Sledge, V. H., & Liebermann, P. B. (1987). Evaluations of intern performance by medical inpatients. American Journal of Medicine, 83, 938-944.
21.
Owens, D. N.
, Div, M., Nelson, D. K., & Tally, N. J. (1995). The irritable bowel syndrome: Long-term prognosis and the physician-patient interaction. Annals of Internal Medicine, 122, 107-112.
22.
Peabody, F. W.
(1927). The care of the patient. Journal of the American Medical Association, 88, 877-882.
23.
PSQ Project Coinvestigators
. (1989). Final report on the patient satisfaction questionnaire project (2E-1). Washington, DC: American Board of Internal Medicine.
24.
Rich, M. W.
, Beckham, V., Wittenberg, C., Leven, C. L., Freedland., K. E., & Carney, R. M. (1995). A multidisciplinary intervention to prevent the readmission of elderly patients with congestive heart failure. New England Journal of Medicine, 333, 1190-1195.
25.
Seidel, H. M.
, Ball, J. W., Dains, J. E., & Benedict, G. W. (Eds.). (1991). Mosby's guide to physical examination (2nd ed.). St. Louis, MO: C. V. Mosby.
26.
Swartz, M. H.
(Ed.). (1989). Textbook of physical diagnosis. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.
27.
Tamblyn, R.
, Benaroya, S., Snell, L., McLeod, P. J., Schnard, B., & Abrahamowicz, M. (1994). The feasibility and value of using patient satisfaction ratings to evaluate internal medicine residents. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 9, 146-152.
28.
Tice, F.
, & Sloan, P. (1978). Practice of Medicine (Vol. 1). Hagerstown, MD: Harper & Row.
29.
Vinson, J. M.
, Rich, M. W., Sperry, J. C., Shah, A. S., & McNamar, T. (1990). Early readmission of elderly patients with congestive heart failure. Journal ofAmerican Geriatrics Society, 38, 1290-1295.
30.
Williams, S. V.
, & Eisenberg, J. M. (1986). A controlled trial to decrease the unnecessary use of diagnostic tests. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 1, 8-13.
31.
Wyngander, J. B.
, Smith, L. H., & Bennett, J. C. (Eds.). (1992). Cecil's textbook of medicine (19th ed.). Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.
