The lack of communication between doctors and patients.

In their daily work the majority of doctors assume that communication with patients is easy and that it needs no special study. This is a false assumption which starts at undergraduate level, where there is no formalized training of the South African medical student in the art of communication. A mass of literature on communication in medicine has evolved very recently; some of it is reviewed, and a plea is made that urgent attention be devoted to this gap in South African medicine.