profession
Doctors have many ways to say no
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted March 8, 2010
Physicians can use various approaches to turn down patient requests for inappropriate treatment while still preserving the doctor-patient relationship, according to a study in the Feb. 22 Archives of Internal Medicine.
Researchers examined 199 standardized patient visits in which antidepressants were requested at primary care offices in California and New York in 2003 and 2004. In 44% of the cases, physicians did not prescribe drugs (link).
Among the denials, 63% of doctors used one or more strategies that emphasized the patient's perspective, such as recommending that the patient seek a counselor or mental health specialist. Thirty-one percent of physicians took biomedical approaches, either prescribing sleeping aides or ordering a diagnostic workup. The remaining doctors simply rejected patient requests.
Patient satisfaction was higher when the doctor used a patient perspective-based strategy to deny requests.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/03/08/prbf0308.htm.
