Dr. Jay Gordon (Huffington Post) discusses a recent study:
Nearly every one of 253 adults asked said that their doctors should ask them about family stress and conflict, even when that conflict extended to violence.
In contrast, only about a third of these people said that their doctors actually did inquire about these crucial aspects of physical and emotional well-being.
And indeed the summary he links to reports:
In a survey of 253 male and female patients, nearly all (97 percent) believed physicians should ask patients about family stress and conflict, and most (94 percent) thought physicians could be helpful.
Despite this, only one third of the respondents remembered ever being asked about family conflict by their physicians.
But if you look closely at the study itself, and in particular table 1, you see that 67% of respondents said that family doctors should “sometimes” ask about family conflict, and only 29% said that doctors should “often” ask about this. This suggests that there may not be much “contrast” there: 67% of respondents think that the doctor should only ask about this sometimes — presumably under certain circumstances, though each respondent may have a different view of what those circumstances might be. Many doctors might well take a similar view, and simply conclude in many cases (whether rightly or wrongly) that this particular patient’s circumstances don’t justify such an inquiry.
If the summary carries an implicit claim that doctors are being too reticent, and aren’t doing what patients really want them to do (which is how I read the summary and Dr. Gordon’s reference to it), such a claim doesn’t really seem to be supported by the facts. The claim may still be right, but this study just doesn’t really support it.
Nothing earth-shaking, I realize; if people misread this study, we’re not going to see a disaster of Biblical proportions. But it is, I think, yet another a reminder to be careful about summaries of studies, which often omit qualifiers (e.g., “sometimes”) that are quite important.
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