The measurement of blood pressure in the physician's office is subject to a number of observer errors and also to the "white-coat effect." Automatic devices that measure blood pressure without a human observer in the room can eliminate many of these problems. We argue for greater use of these devices in the physician's office.

The trainee in difficulty is someone who is either marginal or at risk of failing in his or her clinical performance. Dealing effectively with these learners can pose problems even for seasoned medical educators. This article discusses some of the common mistakes made by educators in dealing with the trainee in difficulty and offers suggestions for a systematic approach. Further, the roles of f...

The purpose of our research is the development of a new technology, teleimmersion, which will make possible 3D visual communication between people distributed over the globe. We are putting together a low-end, PC-based, affordable hardware system, and are developing the software for a teleimmersion node (T-node). The software is based on accurate polynocular stereo. We will describe a testbed f...

BACKGROUND Literature on difficult doctor-patient relationships has focused on the "difficult patient." Our objective was to determine physician and practice characteristics associated with greater physician-reported frustration with patients. METHODS We conducted a secondary analysis of the Physicians Worklife Survey, which surveyed a random national sample of physicians. Participants were 1...

BACKGROUND Patients' religious commitments and religious communities are known to influence their experiences of illness and their medical decisions. Physicians are also dynamic partners in the doctor-patient relationship, yet little is known about the religious characteristics of physicians or how physicians' religious commitments shape the clinical encounter. OBJECTIVE To provide a baseline...

BACKGROUND Information on physicians' performance on measures of clinical quality is rarely available to patients. Instead, patients are encouraged to select physicians on the basis of characteristics such as education, board certification, and malpractice history. In a large sample of Massachusetts physicians, we examined the relationship between physician characteristics and performance on a ...