CALIBRATING THE PHYSICIAN - PERSONAL AWARENESS AND EFFECTIVE PATIENT-CARE

Physicians' personal characteristics, their past experiences, values, attitudes, and biases can have important effects on communication with patients; being aware of these characteristics can enhance communicat ion. Because medical training and continuing education programs rarely undertake an organized approach to promoting personal awareness, we p ropose a ''curriculum'' of 4 core topics for reflection and discussion . The topics are physicians' beliefs and attitudes, physicians' feelin gs and emotional responses in patient care, challenging clinical situa tions, and physician self-care. We present examples of organized activ ities that can promote physician personal awareness such as support gr oups, Balint groups, and discussions of meaningful experiences in medi cine. Experience with these activities suggests that through enhancing personal awareness physicians can improve their clinical care and inc rease satisfaction with work, relationships, and themselves.