As a teacher of communication, I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time exhorting Learners, both students and practising doctors, to elicit 'the patient's perspective'. This involves asking patients about their ideas (what they think is going on), their concerns (what they are worried might be going on) and their expectations (what they're imagining might be going to happen, or what they want to happen). A growing body of evidence indicates that this opens the door to an array of useful outcomes: patient satisfaction, increased concordance, physical outcomes such as pain relief,
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