title: Survey on hand gestures relevance in patient practitioner communication: a homeopathic example.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Gestures play an important role in medical communication.
  
  
  METHODS
  94 homeopaths (Mean age 49.6 years, 20% male) completed a 20-item questionnaire on utilization and relevance of gestures in patients' symptom description.
  
  
  RESULTS
  After excluding nine items due to low validity (n = 4) or low item total correlation (n = 5), factor analysis of the questionnaire resulted in the following three dimensions explaining 66.6% of variance: 'Hand gestures in relation to verbal expressions' (5 items; Cronbach's α = 0.81), 'Hand Gestures describing the experience of bodily and mental symptoms' (4 items; Cronbach's α = 0.74) and 'practitioners' behavior and active attitude in observing hand gestures' (2 items; Cronbach's α = 0.86).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The survey shows how homeopathic therapists view patients' hand gestures, whether they use these diagnostically and how this relates to their homeopathic practice. Practitioners with only homeopathic influence on this topic are highly congruent to findings on hand gestures from other domains.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Integrative Medicine, Witten/Herdecke University, Gerhard-Kienle-Weg 4, 58313 Herdecke, Germany. Electronic address: max.escher@posteo.de.
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Escher
authors.affiliation: Institute for Integrative Medicine, Witten/Herdecke University, Gerhard-Kienle-Weg 4, 58313 Herdecke, Germany.
authors.forename: Arndt
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Büssing
authors.affiliation: Institute for Integrative Medicine, Witten/Herdecke University, Gerhard-Kienle-Weg 4, 58313 Herdecke, Germany; Department of Clinical Psychology, Witten/Herdecke University, Alfred-Herrhausen-Str. 50, 58448 Witten, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ostermann
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006225:Hand; D006705:Homeopathy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Hand gestures; Homeopathy; Patient–practitioner communication; Survey