Journal of palliative medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Association between Physician Trainee Self-Assessments in Discussing Religion and Spirituality and Their Patients' Reports.
Effective physician communication at the end-of-life is a cornerstone to providing patient-centered palliative care. Educational programs in physician communication often rely on self-assessments of physician knowledge and attitudes and seldom provide patients' reports. Thus, it is unclear whether physician self-assessments are associated with patient perspectives. ⋯ Physician trainee self-assessments may be a valid surrogate for patient ratings of quality with respect to religious/spiritual communication. This specific domain of physician-patient communication should receive further investigation as our finding contrasts with reports of more general measures of physician-patient end-of-life communication.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Race, income, and education: associations with patient and family ratings of end-of-life care and communication provided by physicians-in-training.
Minority race and lower socioeconomic status are associated with poorer patient ratings of health care quality and provider communication. ⋯ Patient race is associated with perceptions of the quality of communication about end-of-life care provided by physicians-in-training, but the association was opposite to our hypothesis and appears to be mediated by socioeconomic status. Family member predictors of these perceptions differ from those observed for patients. Further investigation of these associations may guide interventions to improve care delivered to patients and families.