Doctors Talking with Patients/Patients Talking with Doctors: Improving Communication in Medical...

Roter, Debra L. & Judith A. Hall. Doctors Talking with Patients/Patients Talking with Doctors: Improving Communication in Medical Visits, 2nd ed. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2006; www.praeger.com.

Since the publication of the first edition of this book fifteen years ago, medicine has

undergone a transformation. Unlike the earlier revolutions in medicine, spurred by advances in technology and pharmacology, the current transformation has been driven by a political, professional, and scientific dialogue on health care quality, medical errors, health care financing, and health care delivery systems. In the past several years, three Institute of Medicine reports have included a primary focus on the nature and quality of medical communication (Institute of Medicine, 1999, 2001, 2003). Moreover, health communication objectives are included in the surgeon general's Healthy People 2010 objectives for the nation (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). Related to these national reports, unprecedented reforms in medical education have been promulgated by the professions accrediting and credentialing bodies. Beginning in 2002, the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) added competency requirements for graduates in six core skills, including interpersonal communication. The significance of these changes has reverberated across the medical education spectrum; virtually every training institution in the country has undertaken a review of its medical curriculum and the way it trains physicians.

In view of these developments, all chapters have been updated with references to current literature, some sections have been added to accommodate the much richer literature that now exists in this area. The book is divided into three parts. Part I is descriptive in nature and is designed to reflect what is known about the effect of sociodemographics and contextual variables on how doctors and patients typically behave; it also addresses some of the methodological issues related to how we know this, from a variety of vantage points. Part II describes what usually happens in medical visits, to provide the reader with insight into how predictable medical visits really are, but it also describes what outcomes can be expected and how both the process and the result might be improved. Part III discusses in more depth some of the valuable outcomes that might follow from improved doctor-patient talk.

Debra L. Roter holds joint appointments as Professor of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Nursing. Judith A. Hall is Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University.