O.O.10.4 - The floor is yours - or mine? Observational study on interruptions during the opening statement.: Presenter(s): Inge (A.G.) Vos, Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis Assen, Netherlands

• Published in: Patient education and counseling Vol. 109
• Main Authors: Driever, Ellen (E.M), Brand, Paul (P.L.P.)
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.04.2023
• ISSN: 0738-3991; 1873-5134
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2022.10.252

To analyse verbal interruption practices by Dutch hospital consultants during the patient’s opening statement. Cross-sectional descriptive study. Isala teaching hospital in Zwolle, the Netherlands. 94 video recorded consultations of 27 consultants, recorded in 2018 and 2019. Physicians’ verbal utterances (interruptions) during patients’ opening statements, rate of completion of patients’ opening statements, time to first interruption, and the effect of gender, age and physician specialty on the rate and type of physicians’ verbal interruptions. Patients were interrupted a median of 9 times per minute during their opening statement, the median time to first interruption was 6.5s. Most interruptions (67%) were backchannels (such as “hm hm” or “go on”), considered to be encouraging the patient to continue. In 52 consultations (55%), patients could not finish their opening statement due to a floor changing interruption by the consultant. The median time to such an interruption was 31.4seconds, on average 20seconds shorter than a finished opening statement (p=0.004). Female consultants used more backchannels (median 9, interquartile range [IQR] 5 to 12) than male consultants (median 7, IQR 2 to 11, p=0.028). Hospital-based consultants use various ways to interrupt patients during their opening statements. Most of these interruptions are encouraging backchannels. Still, consultants intrusively interrupt more than half of their patients during their opening statements after a median of 31seconds.