The importance of physician listening from the patients' perspective: enhancing diagnosis, healing, and the doctor-patient relationship.

Objective: The research findings reported here describe the importance and various functions of physician listening according to patients.

Methods: Fifty-eight patients of the McGill University Health Centre were interviewed using a qualitative, interpretive design approach.

Results: Patients explained why listening was important to them and these findings were organized into three themes: (a) listening as an essential component of clinical data gathering and diagnosis; (b) listening as a healing and therapeutic agent; and (c) listening as a means of fostering and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship.

Teaching clinical thinking to first-year medical students.

Background: The ability to think clearly and critically is necessary to normal human conduct. Particular forms of reasoning characteristic of practitioners of medicine have been studied, but a principled pedagogical framework that also reflects clinical practice has not been delineated.

Aims: The goals are: identify the principles that underlie the clinical thinking of physicians, develop a pedagogical framework, and design and implement curricular modules for medical students in the first year of their studies.