Patient-physician interactions in diabetes management: Consistencies and variation in the structure and content of two consultations

The structure and content of medical consultations concerning diabetes were examined in two, successive quarterly medical consultations between two physicians and their diabetes patients (N=44). The consultations were audiotaped and coded for structure (e.g. question asking, information giving) using a modified version of the Roter Interactional Analysis System (inter-coder correlations typically exceeded 0.90 for the composite variables derived from the coding system). The tapes were also coded for content by monitoring the topics discussed (e.g. diet, medication, exercise). The majority of the interactions consisted primarily of information giving and positive talk on the part of both patients and providers. Nutrition-related issues, blood glucose monitoring, medication and exercise were addressed in the majority of interactions, but other regimen areas such as foot care, smoking habits, and alcohol were seldom discussed. There was little stability across the mio consultations in terms of either structure (median test-retest correlation=0.24) or content (majority of test-retest correlations were below 0.30). The importance of studying more than one patient-physician encounter when studying interaction style and content is discussed, as is the need for investigation of interactions between non-physician health care providers and patients with chronic disease.