Predicting patient satisfaction from physicians' nonverbal communication skills
DiMatteo, M.R.; Taranta, A.; Friedman, H.S.; Prince, L.M.
Medical Care 18(4): 376-387
1980
ISSN/ISBN: 0025-7079 PMID: 7401698 DOI: 10.2307/3764191Document Number: 499445
The association between the nonverbal communication skills of physicians and patient satisfaction with medical care was assessed in 2 studies involving 71 residents in internal medicine and 462 patients. Scores on standardized, reliable, and valid measures of nonverbal skills such as the ability to communicate and to understand facial expressions, body movement, and voice tone cues to emotion were correlated with the ratings physicians received from patients regarding satisfaction with the technical and socioemotional aspects of the medical care received. Although physicians' nonverbal communication skills were little related to patients' ratings of the technical qualities of care received, measures of these skills did predict satisfaction with "art of care" aspects. Specifically, the art of care assessment was dependent on the physicians' skill at understanding bodily nonverbal communication, the physicians' capacity to express emotion through voice tone, and their ability to avoid communicating negative emotion when intending positive. These findings provide support to the centrality of interpersonal effectiveness to the physician-patient relationship, especially nonverbal sensitivity and expressiveness. Improvements in the level of physicians' nonverbal encoding and decoding skills through training and selection can be expected to improve the quality of medical care and perhaps even its cost-effectiveness.