Sensitivity to patient's psychosocial concerns: Relationships among ratings by primary care and traditional internal medicine house officers and patient self-assessments

This study examined house officers' sensitivity to patients' psychosocial concerns. Primary care house officers, traditionally trained internal medicine house officers, a social worker, and 104 ambulatory care patients independently completed an assessment instrument to indicate the extent to which a set of 20 defined psychosocial issues concerned the patients. We examined the magnitude of difference and extent of correlation in the independent reports of the patient, house officer, and social worker. These analyses were conducted on both the individual psychosocial issues and on sets of concerns derived from an oblique rotation factor analysis of the patients' responses. Primary care trainees' assessments of their patients' concerns correlated more frequently with the independent assessments of the patients and social worker than did the judgments of the traditionally trained house officers. The factor analysis identified six factors that accounted for 64.4% of the variance in patients' responses. The correlations between the primary care trainees' and patients' assessments were statistically significant on five of these six factors; the correlations between the traditionally trained residents' and patients' assessment were statistically significant on two of the factors. These results provide evidence of the primary care house officer training program's achievement of the goal of enhanced physician awareness of patients' psychosocial concerns. The results also support training efforts aimed at increasing physicians' ability to assess their patients' psychosocial concerns.