House staff attitudes toward psychosocial aspects of patient care

Abstract

Many medical schools and residency training programs are in the process of developing and implementing new educational programs to teach medical interviewing skills and psychosocial aspects of patient care. In this process teachers may find residents less interested in the psychosocial aspects of patient care than in traditionally emphasized biomedical information. This article describes the attitudes of 120 residents from three teaching hospitals in Portland, Oregon, toward both the psychosocial aspects of patient care and the feasibility of teaching psychosocial skills to residents, as measured by a newly developed scale. Attitudes of residents are compared to those of practicing internists. The average total score for residents was significantly lower than for practicing internists (88.8 vs. 91.8, on a 115‐point scale), indicating less favorable attitudes. Resident attitudes indicated some potential challenges to teaching in this domain. For example, a significant number of residents felt that good interpersonal skills were inherent to the personality of the physicians, and they were uncertain that these skills could be taught to physicians. This scale may be useful to training programs as they introduce new educational curricula in the psychosocial domain.