THE CONTENT OF PHYSICIAN AND ELDERLY PATIENT INTERACTION IN THE MEDICAL PRIMARY CARE ENCOUNTER

To examine the content of physician-elderly patient medical primary care encounters, audiotapes of 66 routine follow-up general medical visits were analyzed. Using the Multi-dimensional Interaction Analysis system, coders determined which content areas were discussed, which interactive participant initiated the discussion, and the quality of physician responsiveness in the different content areas. As hypothesized, physicians initiated discussion of the majority of subjects. Both physicians and patients were most likely to initiate discussion of medical topics. Physicians were more responsive to those topics that they initiated compared to the topics that older patients initiated. Implications of the research for physicians and elderly patients are discussed.