Emotional Patients Do Not Perceive Medical Consultations and Advices

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Anjou: Always good to take someone along to consults for another set of

ears!!

Emotional Patients Do Not Perceive Medical Consultations and Advices

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People who are too worried about their diagnose tend to misinterpret what

their doctors tell them

By andra Lupu, Health News Editor

According to BBC News, patients who are too emotional, anxious and worried

about their diagnoses when seeing a specialist are very likely to fail

perceiving medical consultations. Even if doctors speak in a detached and

calm manner with their patients, the latter are too stressed and emotional

to actually pay attention to the physician's advices. Therefore, they get it

all wrong and in most cases the patients cannot remember what the doctor

told them after they have left the doctor's office.

Noting that most people who go to see a doctor cannot remember even half of

the conversation with their physician, psychologists from the University of

Marburg, Germany, carried out a study to investigate how patients really

perceive doctors' consultations and advices. Their report was published in

The Publish Library of Science Medicine, in which scientists urged doctors

to verify at the end of one consultation if their patients have memorized

what they have been talking about.

Besides not paying attention to consultations, patients also tend to

misinterpret what their doctors tell them. For example, emotional patients

tend to aggravate the situation and to believe that they suffer from a

certain disorder or disease even if their physician has just told them they

are free of risk.

In the trial, German researchers asked volunteers to listen to three tapes

on which they recorded different information: the first tape contained the

voice of a doctor who explained test results to a patient who suffered from

abdominal pain; on the second tape was recorded a negative conversation of

some people who haven't been invited to a barbecue; the third tape presented

a neutral conversation about a car breakdown.

Participants in the study were " emotional " patients, others were patients

with depression and finally, there was the third category: healthy people.

When asked to retell the information comprised on the tapes, emotional

patients had good and accurate memories about the last two tapes (the

invitation to the barbecue and the car breakdown) but showed to have

misinterpreted all the diagnoses on the first tape to worse ones.

Namely, if the doctor on the first tape told the imaginary patient that he

should not be worried about his health condition because he is all right and

does not suffer from a disease - the " emotional " patients understood that

the doctor told them they are ill with the disease. The same happened in the

case of an ambiguous explanation about a diagnose, such as " it is likely

that you suffer from... "

In conclusion, German researchers advised doctors to ask their patients,

after a consultation, to make a brief account of the conversation they have

just had. " This would make it possible to detect when patients have

misremembered the likelihood of various medical explanations, and provide an

opportunity to correct the situation. This would benefit patients and reduce

the strain on health care systems. "

All the best,

~ Karl