Establishing Rapport

Establishing rapport begins with trust. Mistrust may result in a patient's reluctance to discuss lifestyle issues or behaviors that may be contributing to his/her illness. A study in Archives of Family Medicine (Doescher 2000) attempted to assess whether a person's race or ethnicity is associated with low trust in the physician. The study found that after adjusting for socioeconomic and other factors, members of nonwhite cultural groups reported less-positive perceptions of physicians than did whites. Patients who lacked physician continuity on repeat clinic visits reported even less-positive perceptions of their physicians (Doescher et al. 2000).

Samuth Koam speaks about the desire of patients to have genuine rapport with their providers. | 2.0 MB Flash File

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