PURPOSE
It has been well known that doctor-patient communication is a key to the better doctor-patient relationship. However, in Korea, there has not been much researches on the causal factors influencing the doctor-patient communication as well as on patient satisfaction and compliance. This study attempts to investigate the relationships between patient social styles and doctors' communication styles as well as patient outcomes. METHODS: Patient subjects were recruited from two mid-size local hospitals. The questionnaires consist of social styles, patient-perceived doctors' communication, and patient satisfaction/compliance measures. One hundred ninety useable data were analyzed. RESULTS: For those highly satisfied patients, patients with analytic style showed the highest percentage of viewing their doctors as highly empathic. On the other hand, for those patients with high compliance, expressive style patients showed the highest rates of regarding their doctors as highly affective. And amiable style patients are most likely to view their doctors as highly cognitive. For analytic style patients, cognitive empathy had positive effects on patient satisfaction. For amiable style patients, doctors' cognitive empathy had positive influence on patient compliance. For expressive style patients, doctors' affective empathic communication had positive effects on both patient satisfaction/compliance while cognitive had positive effects only on patient compliance. CONCLUSION: The results show that the different social styles of patients might influence on the fact how the patients perceive their doctors' communication as well as how much they are satisfied and compliant. Thus, when we as an medical educators need to realize the importance of this mechanism and bring this learning into classrooms.
