OBJECTIVES: To determine the proportion of patients who are accompanied by another person (ie, partner, child, relative, friend) during visits to their doctors; to describe the demographic characteristics and role(s) assumed by the main accompanying person and the nature of the presenting dyads; and to describe the influence of the main accompanying person on the patient-doctor interaction. DESIGN: Prospective observational survey. SETTING: Family practices in London, Ont, and surrounding area. PARTICIPANTS: Eight family physicians completed surveys on 100 consecutive patients attending for both regularly scheduled and emergency visits. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Roles and influence of the main accompanying person. RESULTS: Approximately one third (30.4%) of patients were accompanied during visits to their doctors. Children and patients older than 75 years most frequently had another person with them. Most patients (74.1%) were accompanied by one person who most often was female (72.6%) and between the ages of 21 and 40 years (53.6%). The accompanying person's role was most frequently described by doctors as an advocate for the patient (n = 235, 68.5%). If the accompanying person was a child, however, the role was most often described as a silent observer (n = 36, 68.6%). The influence of the main accompanying person on the patient-doctor encounter was usually described as positive (95.1%). CONCLUSIONS: Physicians report that people accompanying patients usually have a positive influence on medical encounters. Future studies need to include patients' and accompanying persons' perspectives.

Roles and influence of people who accompany patients on visits to the doctor.

Knowing how family members interact has long been appreciated by family physicians as important in understanding a patient's health status Yet, systematic application of this knowledge has not been the rule in clinical practice Much of the explanation for the incongruity between what is intuitivel

The physician and family function assessment.

G Pirooz Sholevar, Linda D Schwoeri (eds)Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2003ISBN 088048 518 3 pp 948 $14200Psychiatrists like Ackerman, Wynne, Lidz and Jackson were among the 

Textbook of family and couples therapy: clinical applications

Background: Despite enthusiastic promotion of family genograms, the impact of routine use of this tool on clinical practice has not been systematically examined. The present study investigated whether doing a genogram, or having one available, makes physicians more sensitive to psychosocial issues or in other ways affects the physician-patient relationship or the process of clinical care. Methods: In a randomized clinical trial, patients visiting 5 physicians at an academic family practice center (n = 189) received a physician-administered genogram (PAGE); a self-administered genogram (SAGE), which the patient completed before seeing the physician; or no genogram. A fourth (baseline) group was tested without genograms prior to the randomized trial. Results: A nalyses of patients’ and physicians’ postencounter questionnaires showed no impact of genograms on how physicians think about and deal with clinical problems or how patients view the encounter with their physicians. Compared with control groups, neither patient- nor physician-administered genograms increased the physician’s (self-defined) understanding of the patient or the importance the physician attached to psychosocial issues in the case. A positive finding was that physicians considered genograms more relevant when they did them themselves. On the other hand, physician-administered genograms also increased the length of the encounter and were substantially less complete (conveying less information) than genograms completed by patients. Conclusions: The results leave open the possibility that genograms do make a difference when used routinely by residents or experts or in difficult cases when family assessment is indicated. While enthusiasm about genogram applications in family medicine is understandable, the clinical utility of this tool remains to be demonstrated scientifically.

The SAGE-PAGE Trial: Do Family Genograms Make A Difference?

This study investigated patients' desire for family conferences in a variety of clinical situations encountered in family practice. Two hundred seventy-six family practice center patients were given a questionnaire in which they indicated the likelihood that they would want a family conference in 21 clinical situations. Patients' past experiences with family conferences as well as demographic information were obtained. For serious medical problems and some behavioral problems, patients indicated a high likelihood of wanting a family conference. They showed moderate to low interest in such conferences for guidance for family developmental stages, health promotion, and minor acute problems. Demographic factors and previous experiences with family conferences did not predict patients' interest in future conferences.

The family conference: what do patients want?

There are three factors supporting current efforts to bring the family into the mainstream of American medicine: (1) research capabilities of the discipline of epidemiology, (2) the intervention skills developed by family therapy, and (3) pressures to provide cost-effective care as economic resources diminish. The fundamental question addressed in this paper is, when can it be helpful for the family physician to convene the family in the consultation room? Physicians in the field and residents in training are often reluctant to take this step because of time constraints, awkwardness in talking to two or more members of the family, and unfamiliarity with what to do with the information that is gathered. From currently available research data, a list of 14 medical conditions is presented in which it can be predicted that family functioning or nonfunctioning is contributing to the cause of disease, or that the family will experience a major reaction to the illness. These medical conditions offer an ideal opportunity to begin working with families. A specific case history illustrating this approach is presented to demonstrate that convening the family can be an important dimension of family medicine.

When is it helpful to convene the family

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Schmidt Dd

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

When is it helpful to convene the family