Looking back, looking forward: A historical reflection on psychotherapy process research.

In 1983, a group of 14 prominent psychotherapy process researchers attended a workshop sponsored by the US National Institute of Mental Health. Although the previous decade had seen a marked emphasis on psychotherapy outcome research, there had also been several major advances in the field of process research. The goals of the workshop were to review the current state of the field, address methodological and conceptual issues, and provide recommendations to advance scholarship in this area.

Psychological factors associated with response to maxillofacial injury and its treatment.

Purpose: This study evaluated symptoms of acute stress disorder (ASD), satisfaction with appearance postsurgery, and satisfaction with care in patients with maxillofacial injury at their first postsurgical physician visit. To determine the best predictors of patients' ASD symptoms and satisfaction, data also were obtained on the patients' strategies for coping with the stress of the injury, on the patients' and doctors' interpersonal appraisals of each other, and on the doctors' participatory behavior during the visits.

Patients And Methods: A total of 47 patients who had sustained traumatic maxillofacial injury requiring emergency medical/surgical treatment were administered self-report measures immediately before and after their first postsurgical visit 10 to 12 days after trauma exposure.

Relationship of interpersonal behaviors and health-related control appraisals to patient satisfaction and compliance in a university health center.

Objective: The authors' aim was to evaluate patient-provider relationships in a college health center.

Participants: Eighty student patients and their health-care providers.

Methods: Patients completed a measure of perceived health competence before a consultation and measures of provider participatory behavior and interpersonal behavior before and after the consultation.

Optimal matches of patient preferences for information, decision-making and interpersonal behavior: evidence, models and interventions.

Objective: A comprehensive review was conducted of the theoretical and empirical work that addresses the preference-match strategy in physician-patient communication.

Methods: Searches were conducted on Medline, PsychINFO, InFoTrac One File Plus, Sociological Abstracts, and Dissertation Abstracts through 2004. The following keywords were used: patient preferred and received information; patient preferred and actualized treatment decision-making; patient-physician beliefs in shared decision-making; patient-physician match, fit, or concordance; reciprocal relationship or mutuality; doctor-patient affiliation, control, relationship; match/fit between patient and physician in affiliation, control, or relationship.

Optimism, satisfaction with needs met, interpersonal perceptions of the healthcare team, and emotional distress in patients' family members during critical care hospitalization.

Background: Families of critical care patients experience high levels of emotional distress. Access to information about patients' medical conditions and quality relationships with healthcare staff are high-priority needs for these families.

Objectives: To assess satisfaction with needs met, signs and symptoms of acute stress disorder, interpersonal perception of healthcare staff, level of optimism, and the relationships among these variables in patients' family members.

Opportunity for control, interpersonal impacts, and adjustment to a long-term invasive health care procedure.

This study evaluated the effects of giving patients treatment-relevant choices, and the influence of provider-patient interpersonal behaviors, on patients' adjustment to and satisfaction with a protracted healthcare procedure. 102 patients receiving complete dentures were randomly assigned to a Decisional Control group, a No-Decisional Control group, or to a Treatment as Usual Control group. No main effects for the "control" manipulations were obtained, and interactions obtained between control conditions and patient dispositional differences in locus of control were not consistent with earlier findings.

Integrating measurement of control and affiliation in studies of physician-patient interaction: the interpersonal circumplex.

Following a brief overview and commentary on the physician-patient communication literature, this article summarizes and evaluates research on the relationship between physician-patient control (dominant-submissive) and affiliation (friendly hostile) behaviors as they relate to medical outcomes. Findings for both verbal and nonverbal control and affiliation measures are included. The interpersonal circumplex (together with the important interactional principles that it incorporates) is then introduced as an heuristic guide for future medical interaction research.

Relation of diabetic patients' health-related control appraisals and physician-patient interpersonal impacts to patients' metabolic control and satisfaction with treatment.

Desire for healthcare control, health locus of control, perceived control over diabetes, satisfaction with diabetes treatment, and general personality traits were assessed in 54 Type 1 and Type 2 diabetic patients of the same male endocrinologist during a regularly scheduled office visit. At the end of the consultation, both patients and the physician completed a measure describing the interpersonal impacts produced in each by the other's control and affiliation behaviors. Patient success at diabetes control was assessed via glycosylated hemoglobin A1C (HA1C) level on the day of the visit and variability in HA1C levels across several visits.

An interpersonal communication perspective on resistance in psychotherapy.

This article discusses resistance in psychotherapy using the contemporary interpersonal communication model of psychotherapy. This perspective defines resistance as moments during sessions when the patient and therapist are interacting with one another in such a way that the patient is kept from becoming aware of any covert experiences or transactional patterns that are conflictual and anxiety provoking. The ways in which resistance may be conceptualized and worked with are discussed and applied to three patient vignettes, with an emphasis on working with resistances as they are manifested in the patient-therapist relationship.