As a patient, do you feel uncomfortable if a doctor reveals too much personal information?

In her weekly column, Pauline Chen found that in a third of office visits, doctors made such “self-disclosure statements” with “40 percent . . . unrelated to the patient’s symptoms, family or feelings. In addition, in the vast majority of cases, doctors never returned to the topic that inspired the personal reference in the first place.”

An additional interesting finding was that patients reacted positively to surgeons who revealed something personal, and more negatively to primary care doctors who did the same. Make of that what you will.

Spending more time with patients is a good thing, but the conversation should be focused to the issues at hand, as spontaneous disclosures have the potential to leave a patient less satisfied with the visit.

topics: patients, pauline chen