ABSTRACT
The interactions that occur between patients and physicians during medical visits are an essential point for the enactment of health care. Interaction is necessary, but not sufficient for collaboration. Interactions are communications between two or more people. Collaboration involves cooperative work toward some specific objective in this case, optimal patient health. As the following two subsections demonstrate, physicians and patients can interact, and move toward the objective of patient health, but may do so in a way that has a low degree of cooperation. The most popular sociological model during the 1950s and into the 1960s was that of Talcott Parsons, who presents a relationship in which the physician maintains an 'affect-neutral' association with the patient. Much of the research on the collaborative effects of triads during physician visits focuses on elderly patients. Pediatric visits, however, are also fertile ground for studying the presence of a family member on interactions.
