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Steven Woloshin, MD; Nina A. Bickell, MD, MPH; Lisa M. Schwartz, MD; Francesca Gany, MD; H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH

JAMA. 1995;273(9):724-728.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

What the scalpel is to the surgeon, words are to the clinician... the conversation between doctor and patient is the heart of the practice of medicine.¹

The physician-patient relationship is built through communication and the effective use of language. Along with clinical reasoning, observations, and nonverbal cues, skillful use of language endows the history with its clinical power and establishes the medical interview as the clinician's most powerful tool.^2-5 Language is the means by which a physician accesses a patient's beliefs about health and illness,⁶ creating an opportunity to address and reconcile different belief systems. Furthermore, it is through language that physicians and patients achieve an empathic connection that may be therapeutic in itself.⁷

Because of language barriers, millions of US residents cannot have this connection with their physician. According to the 1990 US Census,⁸ almost 14 million people living in the United States do . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, White River Junction, Vt (Drs Woloshin, Schwartz, and Welch), the Division of Primary Care, New York (NY) University School of Medicine (Drs Bickell and Gany), and the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH (Dr Welch). Dr Bickell is now a senior medical research scientist with the Office of Quality Improvement, New York State Department of Health.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to VA Outcomes Group (111B), Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, White River Junction, VT 05009 (Dr Woloshin).

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