The Association Between Physician Empathy and Variation in Imaging Use.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Variation in emergency physician computed tomography (CT) imaging utilization is well described, but little is known about what drives it. Physician empathy has been proposed as a potential characteristic affecting CT utilization.

Objectives

The objective was to describe empathy in a cohort of emergency physicians and evaluate its association with CT utilization. We also sought to compare emergency physician performance on an empathy psychometric test with performance on other psychometric tests previously proposed as predictors of CT utilization.

Methods

This cross-sectional study included two parts: 1) a secondary analysis of emergency department (ED) CT imaging utilization data in a large health system from July 2013 to June 2014 and 2) a survey study of

SUBMITTER: Melnick ER 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5884096 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature