Initial Responses of Different Health Care Professionals to Various Patients with Headache: Which are Perceived as Difficult?

Abstract

Somatizing patients are considered a challenge to health care professionals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the responses of different health care professionals' to patients with headache with different presentations. Medical professionals (n = 77), clinical psychologists (n = 40), and psychology students (n = 115) were shown with four different manifestations of headache (neutral, somatic trauma, anxious-depressed, and severe somatizing). Health professionals rated their initial cognitive and emotional responses using a standardized questionnaire. The severe somatizing and anxious-depressed patients with headache evoked significantly more negative cognitive and emotional responses in all three samples. Even brief exposure to a patient's story yields specific initial responses from various health care professionals irrespective of their disciplines. Patients with headache and with a distressed presentation evoke significantly more negative cognitive and emotional responses in different health care professionals. Health care professionals should be more aware of their own response to difficult patients; in this way they will be more capable of managing this patient group.