Physician Self-Disclosure During Patient Visits

Many physicians share personal experiences as a way to improve patient-physician dialogue and patient comfort. In a recent study, researchers assessed the frequency and content of physician self-disclosures during primary care visits. Middle-aged “standardized patients” made appointments as if they were real patients seeking care for gastrointestinal reflux or medically unexplained symptoms. One hundred physicians agreed to receive two unannounced visits from these patients and to have the visits recorded by a hidden device.

The researchers excluded encounters in which the physician suspected that the visitor was not a real patient, leaving 113 visits for review. Thirty-four percent of visits contained at least one self-disclosure, and most …