Word: doctor
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...once it has been recognized, exercise-induced asthma is easily treated with short-acting bronchodilators such as albuterol - in the study, using albuterol inhalers helped athletes feel a whole lot better and work out longer. So if you find your lungs burning through every workout, check in with your doctor. There may be a reason for your wheezing - and a simple solution to help you breathe easier...
Every patient wants to find a doctor who listens. But wouldn't it be easier if all doctors were just better listeners? A new paper in the Sept. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that it might not be so hard to make it happen: in the first comprehensive study of clinical-skills exams given to doctors, researchers from McGill University in Montreal show that poor scores in the communication portion of the test are highly predictive of which new doctors are likely to clash with patients in the future. By evaluating communication skills early...
...their study, the McGill researchers tracked all 3,424 physicians who took the Medical Council of Canada clinical-skills examination between 1993 and 1996, and who were then licensed to practice in Ontario or Quebec. The exam, which was rolled out between 1992 and 1993, requires doctors to interact with actors posing as patients in a series of standardized scenarios; trained physician evaluators then judge how well the doctor takes patient histories, makes diagnoses, manages treatment and communicates with the patients...
When researchers followed up with the doctors in 2005, they found that the docs' scores in communication were strongly correlated to the number of patient complaints they had racked up in their first years of practice. Overall, the 3,424, physicians had 1,116 complaints among them, of which 696 were deemed valid after medical-authority investigation. The physicians who scored low on the test - the poor communicators, who were, say, condescending, judgmental or flippant in their behavior - had generated a disproportionate number of those complaints. Doctors with scores in the bottom quartile on the test's communication-related portion...
...current JAMApaper is the first to measure how accurately a standardized test can evaluate doctors' skills and how effectively those grades can predict future patient-complaint rates. According to the study's authors, when patients complain in the U.S. and Canada, it's most often about doctors? communication or attitude problems, rather than, say, quality-of-care issues or office screw-ups. And plenty of past studies have shown a link between lousy doctor communication and poor medical outcomes, such as inadequate care and malpractice suits...