ABSTRACT
It has been reported that contemporary physicians have difficulty in appropriately responding to their patients' needs. This impairment in communication produces deterioration in the doctor-patient relationship
5 (Hall, Stein, Roter, & Rieser, 1999; Toon, 1999). Surprisingly, such deficient communication skills persist despite evidence that indicates that improved medical outcome is correlated with increased communication with patients (Stewart, Brown, Boon, Galadja, Mere-
10 dith, & Sangster, 1999). Unfortunately, such skills also may create potentially fatal patient-initiated delays in beginning treatment (Zapka, Estabrook, Gilliland, Leviton, Meischke, & Melville, 1999). Given this problem in communication, patients give more trust to phy-
15 sicians' assistants (Assenso-Okyeriere, Osei, Anum, & Adukono, 1999) and other alternative health care providers (Duwrick & Frith, 1999) than to physicians (Shaughnessy, Cincotta, & Adelman, 1999).
