A linguistic study of patient-centered interviewing: emergent interactional effects.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate interactional effects of patient-centered interviewing (PCI) compared to isolated clinician-centered interviewing (CCI).


METHODS
We conducted a pilot study comparing PCI (N=4) to CCI (N=4) for simulated new-patient visits. We rated interviews independently and measured patient satisfaction with the interaction via a validated questionnaire. We conducted interactional sociolinguistic analysis on the interviews and compared across three levels of analysis: turn, topic, and interaction.


RESULTS
We found significant differences between PCI and CCI in physician responses to patients' psychosocial cues and concerns. The number and type of physician questions also differed significantly across PCI and CCI sets. Qualitatively, we noted several indicators of physician-patient attunement in the PCI interviews that were not present in the CCI interviews. They spanned diverse aspects of physician and patient speech, suggesting interactional accommodation on the part of both participants.


CONCLUSIONS
This small pilot study highlights a variety of interactional variables that may underlie the effects associated with patient-centered interviewing (e.g., positive relationships, health outcomes). Question form, phonological accommodation processes, and use of stylistic markers are relatively unexplored in controlled studies of physician-patient interaction.


CONCLUSIONS
This study characterizes several interactional variables for larger scale studies and contributes to models of patient-centeredness in practice.
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, MI, USA. bartell6@msu.edu
Ashley M
AM
Hesson
Issidoros
I
Sarinopoulos
Richard M
RM
Frankel
Robert C
RC
Smith
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D016544:Patient Simulation; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult