Problems of Distortion in Doctor-Patient Communications

Abstract

Physicians too often fail to recognize that what they tell patients is sometimes not understood by patients. The conditions which interfere with adequate understanding include the anxiety of the patient about what is being told to him as well as his intelligence, experience and opportunities to question his medical informant. Factors affecting the physician's ability to communicate clearly relate primarily to the clarity and simplicity of his language, his own anxiety about what he is telling the patient and his providing opportunities for the patient to feed back to him indications of comprehension. The ethical implications of distorted communication between doctors and patients are of great importance. With increasingly complex mutilating and debilitating procedures available to physicians, the patient's capacity to understand what is explained to him is crucial to his ability to give informed consent. By studying actual transcripts of conversations between varieties of physicians and patients, one can define factors which contribute to both clarity and distortion in doctor-patient communication.