Research Article: Observational study on the timing and method of interruption by hospital consultants during the opening statement in outpatient consultations
Abstract:
Objective To analyse verbal interruptions by Dutch hospital consultants during the patient’s opening statement in medical encounters. Design Cross-sectional descriptive study. Setting Isala teaching hospital in Zwolle, the Netherlands. Participants 94 consultations by 27 consultants, video recorded in 2018 and 2019. Main outcome measures Physicians’ verbal interruptions during patients’ opening statements, rate of completion of patients’ opening statements, time to first interruption and the effect of gender, age and physician specialty on the rate and type of physicians’ verbal interruptions. Results Patients were interrupted a median of 9 times per minute during their opening statement, the median time to the first interruption was 6.5?s. Most interruptions (67%) were backchannels (such as ‘hm hm’ or ‘go on’), considered to be encouraging the patient to continue. In 52 consultations (55%), patients could not finish their opening statement due to a floor changing interruption by the consultant. The median time to such an interruption was 31.4?s, on average 20?s shorter than a finished opening statement (p=0.004). Female consultants used more backchannels (median 9, IQR 5–12) than male consultants (median 7, IQR 2–11, p=0.028). Conclusions Hospital-based consultants use various ways to interrupt patients during their opening statements. Most of these interruptions are encouraging backchannels. Still, consultants change the conversational floor in more than half of their patients during their opening statements after a median of 31?s.
Introduction:
Despite increasing attention to patient-centred communication, patients still complain that doctors do not listen enough, insufficiently address their concerns and interrupt them when they present their concerns or complaints. 1 2 A major cause for these shortcomings could lie in the time pressure consultants perceive and in the subsequent strategies they have developed to cope with this, for example, controlling the length of the consultation by interrupting patients. 3 4 By limiting patients in the time and…
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