Chatty doctors

Best to keep focused on the patient:

Doctors often wasted time in what already may have been short visits and stifled the flow of information from patients by gabbing about themselves, their own health problems, their families and their political beliefs, the study found.

The doctors engaged in such “personal disclosures” in 34 percent of visits tracked by the researchers. The personal talk may have been well-intentioned “” to deepen a doctor-patient relationship “” but yielded little of value to patients and sometimes was counterproductive, the researchers said.