Physicians' and patients' recognition of the level of the physician's explanation in medical encounters

The association between patients' and physicians' evaluations of physicians' explanations of medical test results and diagnoses in actual practice was examined in this study. The participants were 630 physician-patient pairs in Japan. Loglinear models for matched-pairs data revealed the following: (a) Concerning the association between patients' and physicians' evaluations, the agreement plus uniform association model fit the data best, and (b) for the physicians' explanations, the physicians' and patients' judgment agreed on the explanation of the medical test results but not on the explanation of the diagnosis. In interacting with patients, physicians should bear in mind that their judgments do not always agree with those of patients with respect to the level of explanation necessary.