MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
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Dr. Gurmankin Levy[/caption]
Dr. Andrea Gurmankin Levy, PhD MBE
Department of Social Sciences
Middlesex Community College, Middletown, Connecticut
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: It is so important for clinicians to get accurate information from their patients so that they can make accurate diagnoses and appropriate recommendations. But we know that people tend to withhold information from others, and that this is especially true when it comes to sensitive information. And in fact, in medicine, there is a long-standing conventional wisdom that clinicians need to adjust patients’ answers (e.g., doubling patients’ report of alcohol consumption) to get a more accurate picture. So we wanted to explore this. How many patients withhold medically-relevant information from their clinicians, and why do they do so? There have been surprisingly few studies looking at this question in a comprehensive way.