title: Calibrating the physician. Personal awareness and effective patient care. Working Group on Promoting Physician Personal Awareness, American Academy on Physician and Patient.
abstract: Physicians' personal characteristics, their past experiences, values, attitudes, and biases can have important effects on communication with patients; being aware of these characteristics can enhance communication. Because medical training and continuing education programs rarely undertake an organized approach to promoting personal awareness, we propose a "curriculum" of 4 core topics for reflection and discussion. The topics are physicians' beliefs and attitudes, physicians' feelings and emotional responses in patient care, challenging clinical situations, and physician self-care. We present examples of organized activities that can promote physician personal awareness such as support groups, Balint groups, and discussions of meaningful experiences in medicine. Experience with these activities suggests that through enhancing personal awareness physicians can improve their clinical care and increase satisfaction with work, relationships, and themselves.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Education, MCP-Hahnemann School of Medicine, Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, Philadelphia, Pa 19129, USA.
authors.forename: D H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Novack
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Suchman
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Epstein
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Najberg
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kaplan
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001364:Awareness; D003142:Communication; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003479:Curriculum; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D012657:Self-Help Groups; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D014481:United States