A review of systems for the personal aspects of patient care.

Because patients are appropriate judges of the personal aspects of the care received from physicians, the authors conducted lengthy interviews with 50 randomly chosen medical inpatients. They were asked to describe, in an open-ended but semistructured fashion, their favorable and unfavorable impressions and reactions to the personal aspects of care rendered by their physicians. From the specific comments made by the patients in these interviews, we constructed a detailed taxonomy of desired physician attitudes and behaviors. The taxonomy can be used in a manner analogous to a Review of Systems for teaching students and practitioners the elements of personal care and also can be applied for research in patient-physician communication.