ABSTRACT
Effective physician-patient communication, including awareness of, and engagement with, patients’ psychosocial needs, emotional well-being, and mental health challenges, is essential to physician-patient concordance and to outcomes including patient satisfaction, adherence, and treatment response. Although patient satisfaction is the most frequently studied outcome of communication (Ong, de Haes, Hoos, & Lammes, 1995), adherence and health care outcomes have also been related to physicians’ interpersonal contact expressed through warmth, caring, and listening to the patients’ concerns (Korsch, Gozzi, & Francis, 1968). Such interpersonal elements as affi liativeness (in contrast to dominance, for example) promote patient satisfaction with the medical visit (Buller & Buller, 1987). Partnership and social support from health professionals, as well as from friends and family, are essential to patients’ adherence to recommended treatments (DiMatteo, 2004a; DiMatteo, Reiter, & Gambone, 1994). Research efforts increasingly are being directed toward understanding the role of the therapeutic relationship in fostering physician awareness and patient disclosure of the emotional challenges of illness (Meredith, Orlando, Humphrey, Camp, & Sherbourne, 2001). Appreciating the role of mental health issues, particularly depression and anxiety, in primary care is an essential, though challenging, aspect of everyday medical practice (Wells & Sherbourne, 1999).
