A Study of Doctors\u27 and Patients\u27 Perceptions of Information Processing and Communication Competence During the Medical Interview

Although considerable attention has been given to doctor-patient communica- tion, little work has examined how doctors and patients process information obtained through interaction. The purpose of this research was to examine differences in doctors\u27 and patients\u27 thoughts and feelings and their perceptions of information exchange and relational communication during a medical interview. The results indicate that doctors and patients differ in their thoughts and feelings along several lines and in their views of communication functions. The results are discussed in terms of previous research on doctor-patient communi- cation and implications for communication skills training for both doctors and patients

Bias and measurement errors in radioactivity data from 4 European radiation research laboratories

Four radiation research laboratories participated in an interlaboratory comparison exercise to assess precision in the measurement of radionuclide concentrations. Each laboratory was required to report results for 137Cs, 134Cs and 40K in accordance with their usual procedures. A normal probability plot of the pooled data showed ten of the 161 readings to be obvious outliers and seven of these were attributed to one of the laboratories. One laboratory consistently overestimated relative to the global mean, another laboratory consistently underestimated while the other two showed positive and negative bias dependent on isotope. Both bias and measurement errors were found to increase in the order 137Cs, 134Cs, 40K. A need for greater standardization of analytical techniques was identified