title: Physicians' Reactions to Patients Taking a Position: Sequence Analysis of Admission Interviews in Orthopedic Rehabilitation.
abstract: Little is known about how patients influence health care providers' communication behavior, although this knowledge may contribute to the understanding of the reciprocal influence of patient and provider communication and the pathways between communication and health care outcomes. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore patients' active communication behaviors and how this affects the immediate communication behavior of physicians. We coded 27 admission interviews from three German orthopedic rehabilitation centers with an adapted version of the Roter Interaction Analysis System. The data were analyzed using correlations and sequence analysis, specifically lag analysis. In this article, we report findings in relation to patients taking a position and physicians' reactions. The analysis showed that while all patients took up a position during their consultation, they very rarely contradicted the physician. Moreover, many instances of patients' expression of opinion were strongly determined by physicians' behavior. When physicians asked patients for their opinions they often used alternative questions or closed questions that limited patients' answering possibilities. While the lag analyses showed that patient communication behavior can influence physician communication, in the majority of instances patients' expression of opinions did not lead to a discussion or shared decision making.
authors.affiliation: a Section of Health Care Research and Rehabilitation Research , Medical Center-University of Freiburg.
authors.forename: Andrea C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Schöpf
authors.affiliation: a Section of Health Care Research and Rehabilitation Research , Medical Center-University of Freiburg.
authors.forename: Louisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Puy
authors.affiliation: a Section of Health Care Research and Rehabilitation Research , Medical Center-University of Freiburg.
authors.forename: Erika
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: a Section of Health Care Research and Rehabilitation Research , Medical Center-University of Freiburg.
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Farin
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D009985:Orthopedics; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D017421:Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires