Communication skills are also the No. 1 reason people choose doctors in the first place. Dr. Lowell Levin, a social scientist and emeritus professor at Yale University's School of Medicine and Public Health, cites a slew of factors that conspire to make having a dialogue with doctors more difficult than, say, chatting with the mail carrier. Medicine, practiced properly, is a very stressful occupation. Fear, however, cuts both ways. The thing doctors overlook is that symptoms scare people,'' Inlander said, noting that many patients will ignore, minimize or even outright lie about symptoms out of fear of what a diagnosis will mean.
Many people are even reluctant to visit doctors when they develop clear symptoms of heart disease.
A recent survey by Rodale's Men's Health magazine, Emmaus, for example, found one out of three men and one out of five women, would not go to a doctor even if he or she had chest pains or shortness of breath. Fear can also block patients' hearing what the doctor tells them. Miller said it often takes more than one or two visits for patients to absorb what's been said. Overwhelmingly, though, and from both sides of the examining table, come complaints that, these days, there's just not enough time in a medical visit to talk. However, statistics on the subject cut both ways.