Browsing by Author "Tai-Seale, Ming"

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    Patient and Physician Race and the Allocation of Time and Patient Engagement Efforts to Mental Health Discussions in Primary Care: An Observational Study of Audiorecorded Periodic Health Examinations
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2017-07) Foo, Patricia K.; Frankel, Richard M.; McGuire, Thomas G.; Zaslavsky, Alan M.; Lafata, Jennifer Elston; Tai-Seale, Ming; Medicine, School of Medicine
    This study investigated racial differences in patient-physician communication around mental health versus biomedical issues. Data were collected from audiorecorded periodic health examinations of adults with mental health needs in the Detroit area (2007-2009). Patients and their primary care physicians conversed for twice as long, and physicians demonstrated greater empathy during mental health topics than during biomedical topics. This increase varied by patient and physician race. Patient race predicted physician empathy, but physician race predicted talk time. Interventions to improve mental health communication could be matched to specific populations based on the separate contributions of patient and physician race.
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    Three Types of Ambiguity in Coding Empathic Interactions in Primary Care Visits: Implications for Research and Practice
    (Elsevier, 2012) Stone, Ashley L.; Tai-Seale, Ming; Stults, Cheryl D.; Luiz, Jamie M.; Frankel, Richard M.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Objective: To describe three methodological challenges experienced in studying patients' expressions of emotion in a sample of periodic health exams, and the research and practice implications of these challenges. Methods: Qualitative analysis of empathic cues in audio-taped and transcribed periodic health examinations of adult patients (n=322) in an integrated delivery system. The empathic and potential empathic opportunities methodology was used. Results: Identifying emotional cues that constitute "empathic opportunities" is a complex task. Three types of ambiguity made this task particularly challenging: 1) presentations of emotional cues can be "fuzzy" and varied; 2) expressions of illness can be emotionally laden in the absence of explicit "emotion words"; and 3) empathic opportunities vary in length and intensity. Conclusion: Interactional ambiguities pose a challenge to researchers attempting to document emotional cues with a binary coding scheme that indicates only whether an empathic opportunity is present or absent. Additional efforts to refine the methodological approach for studying empathy in medical interactions are needed. Practice implications: The challenges discussed likely represent the same types of situations physicians find themselves in when talking with patients. Highlighting these ambiguities may aid physicians in better recognizing and meeting the emotional needs of their patients.