Outcomes of Physicians' Communication Goals During Patient Interactions.

During healthcare visits, physicians may set communication goals such as providing their patient with information about treatment; however, no recommendations exist regarding which goals physicians should prioritize during their often-brief interactions with patients. Two studies examined five communication goals (providing information, reducing distress, increasing patient satisfaction, increasing patient adherence, and encouraging hope) in the context of physician-patient interactions and their relationship with patient and physician outcomes. In Study 1, audio-recordings of physician-patient interactions were coded by research assistants for goal-related content.

Should patients be optimistic about surgery? Resolving a conflicted literature.

Following surgery, some patients suffer distress, disappointment, regret, poor adjustment, and poor quality-of-life. Surgeons may define 'success' based on objective clinical outcomes, but patients' perceptions of surgical success rely primarily on a comparison to their initial expectations. We review the literature on the relationship between patients' surgical expectations and psychosocial outcomes and attempt to resolve a conflict in the literature.

Two definitions of waiting well.

Waiting for uncertain news is often distressing, at times even more distressing than facing bad news. The goal of this article was to investigate strategies for "waiting well" during these periods of uncertainty. Specifically, we propose 2 definitions of waiting well.

Waiting for a baby: Navigating uncertainty in recollections of trying to conceive.

Objective: Guided by the uncertainty navigation model, this study examined experiences of uncertainty associated with trying to conceive and identified predictors of this experience using a multi-method approach.

Method: 429 American adults from Amazon's Mechanical Turk who had a child under age three completed online questionnaires regarding their experiences trying to conceive, including recollections of psychological adjustment, use of coping strategies, and individual and situational variability. Then they provided open-ended reflections of their experience trying to conceive.

Patients' anxiety and hope: predictors and adherence intentions in an acute care context.

Context: Good patient-provider interactions promote satisfaction with health care, adherence to treatment recommendations and improved health. However, little research has examined patients' emotions and how they relate to patients' experiences with health care and their adherence intentions in acute care settings.

Objective: This study examined the predictors and consequences of two emotions pertinent to the uncertainty of acute health-care experiences: anxiety and hopefulness.

Mapping individual differences in the experience of a waiting period.

Waiting for uncertain news, such as the outcome of a job interview or medical test, is a ubiquitous and difficult but little studied experience. We conducted a longitudinal examination, guided by the predictions of the uncertainty navigation model (Sweeny & Cavanaugh, 2012), to examine broad trends and individual differences in experiences during a consequential waiting period. Fifty students preparing for the California bar exam completed questionnaires at 6 time points: shortly before and after the exam, at 2 intermediate time points during the 4-month waiting period, and immediately before and after learning whether they passed.

The relative importance of patients' decisional control preferences and experiences.

Objective: Patients' role in treatment decision-making can influence psychosocial and health-related outcomes (i.e. satisfaction, felt respect, adherence).

Predictors of genetic testing decisions: a systematic review and critique of the literature.

Genetic testing is increasingly available in medical settings and direct-to-consumer. However, the large and growing literature on genetic testing decisions is rife with conflicting findings, inconsistent methodology, and uneven attention across test types and across predictors of genetic testing decisions. Existing reviews of the literature draw broad conclusions but sacrifice nuanced analysis that with a closer look reveals far more inconsistency than homogeny across studies.

Expectations in the context of gallbladder and hernia surgery: a descriptive report.

Objective: Patients' expectations predict important health outcomes. The goal of this study is to describe the types of expectations that hernia and gallbladder patients have for the outcomes of their surgery and to identify relationships between these expectations and both patient- and surgeon-reported variables.

Design: Patients (N = 143) at an out-patient surgery clinic completed self-report questionnaires before and after a pre-surgical consultation in which they learned they would be scheduled for surgery.