Patterns Affecting Treatment

Psychologic and social factors influencing patient behavior

• Personality traits or coping style, including coping mechanisms
• Psychodynamic and behavioral factors,
  
  related past experience
• Family and cultural factors, including socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and gender
• Adaptive and maladaptive behavioral responses to stress and illness (eg, drug-seeking behavior, sleep deprivation)
• Interactions between the patient and the physician or the health care system (eg, transference)
• Patient adherence, including general and adolescent

Patient interviewing, consultation, and interactions with the family

• Establishing
  and maintaining rapport
• Data gathering
• Approaches to patient education
• Enticing patients to make lifestyle changes
• Communicating bad news
• "Difficult" interviews (eg, anxious or angry patients)
• Multicultural ethnic characteristics

Medical ethics, jurisprudence, and professional behavior

• Consent and informed consent to treatment
• Physician-patient relationships (eg, ethical conduct, confidentiality)
• Death and dying
• Birth-related issues
• Issues related to patient participation in research
• Interactions with other health professionals (eg, referral)
• Sexuality and the profession; other "boundary" issues
• Ethics of managed care
• Organization and cost of health care delivery

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