Influence of gender on outcomes of medication-history interviewing.

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of patient and provider gender on the outcomes of medication-history interviewing. In a previous study, 112 pharmacy students conducted medication-history interviews with 2 simulated patients. A secondary analysis was accomplished using complete data from 85 of the original 112 pharmacy students. The other 27 students were eliminated because of missing data. Factor analysis and canonical correlation were used to assess associations between the prior study's set of predictor variables and measures of interview completeness and patient satisfaction with the interview. Female and male pharmacy students appear to use different expressive, interactive, and interrogative skills. Allergy-asking was more complete when female pharmacy students interviewed a male patient. Emotive patient satisfaction was found to be associated more positively with a female student and female patient while teleological patient satisfaction between a male student and male patient was nearly double the result of the female-female dyad. Medication-history interview outcomes appear to differ as a consequence of the use of different sets of skills during same-sex or opposite-sex interviews.