Clinician Response to Patient Emotion: Impact on Subsequent Communication and Visit Length.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

It is widely cited-based on limited evidence-that attending to a patient's emotions results in shorter visits because patients are less likely to repeat themselves if they feel understood. We evaluated the association of clinician responses to patient emotions with subsequent communication and visit length.

Methods

We audio-recorded 41 clinicians with 342 unique patients and used the Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES) to time stamp patient emotional expressions and categorize clinician responses. We used random-intercept multilevel-regression models to evaluate the associations of clinician responses with timing of the expressed emotion, patient repetition, and subsequent length of visit.

Results

The mean visit length was 30.4 minutes,

SUBMITTER: Beach MC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8575526 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature