"Chicken pot pie?" : a phenomenology of questions asked by patients during primary care visits PDF
Preview "Chicken pot pie?" : a phenomenology of questions asked by patients during primary care visits
YALE MEDICAL LIBRARY 3 9002 08627 8950 YALE UNIVERSITY CUSHING/WHITNEY MEDICAL UBRARY Permission to photocopy or microfilm processing of this thesis for the purpose of individual scholarly consultation or reference is hereby granted by the author. This permission is not to be interpreted as affecting publication of this work or otherwise placing it in the public domain, and the author reserves all rights of ownership guaranteed under common law protection of unpublished manuscripts. Signature of Author Date YAIF HRRftRY AUG 0 4 1997 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Arcadia Fund https://archive.org/details/chickenpotpiepheOOwalk "CHICKEN POT PIE?": A PHENOMENOLOGY OF QUESTIONS ASKED BY PATIENTS DURING PRIMARY CARE VISHS A Thesis Submitted to the Yale University School of Medicine in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine hf David Elliott Walker 1997 U T n:b + ■ G52.7 ABSTRACT "CHICKEN POT PIE?": A PHENOMENOLOGY OE QUESTIONS ASKED BY PATIENTS DURING PRIMARY CARE VISITS. David E. Walker (Sponsored by Nicholas H. Eiebach). Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. There is increased interest in the effects of improved communication in the doctor-patient relationship. In their interventions to encourage communication within the medical dialogue, investigators have focused attention on patient questions as a key indicator of patient participation. However, investigators have not sought to further characterize what patients are asking. The author set out to do so, employing a qualitative approach to develop a methodology. Two important and potentially useful descriptors of patient questions were generated: question topics and question goals. The methodology was then tested on a sample of encounters between primary care patients and their providers. Patients were found to ask over 12 questions per encounter, 2 to 4 times the averages previously reported. Most questions were about medications, the logistics of the visit, or personal or interpersonal matters. Few questions were about health risks, prevention and prognosis, and even fewer were about matters of diagnosis, disease etiology and pathophysiology. Although most questions were asked to further the patient's factual knowledge, many were intended to express or appeal to emotions. The methodology and the findings are reviewed and discussed, and a theory of patient participation in the doctor-patient relationship is presented.
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