Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Jongerius, Chiara
• Hillen, Marij A.
• Romijn, Johannes A.
• Smets, Ellen M.A.
• Koole, Tom

Titel

Physician gaze shifts in patient-physician interactions: functions, accounts and responses

Ist Teil von

• Patient education and counseling, 2022-07, Vol.105 (7), p.2116-2129

Ort / Verlag

Ireland: Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Physician gaze towards patients is fundamental for medical consultations. Physicians’ use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) affects their gaze towards patients, and may negatively influence this interaction. We aimed to study conversation patterns during gaze shifts of physicians from the patient towards the EHR. Outpatient consultations (N = 8) were eye-tracked. Interactions around physician gaze shifts towards the computer were transcribed. We found that physician gaze shifts have different interactional functions, e.g., introducing a topic switch or entering data into the EHR. Furthermore, physicians differ in how they account for their gaze shifts, i.e., both implicitly and explicitly. Third, patients vary in treating the gaze shift as an indication to continue their turn or not. Our results suggest that physician gaze shifts vary in function, in how physicians account for them, and in how they influence the conversation. Future research should take into account distinctions when relating gaze to patient outcomes. Physicians may be aware of the interactional context of their gaze behaviour. Patients respond differently to various types of gaze shifts. How physicians handle gaze shifts can therefore have different consequences for the interaction. •We studied physician gaze shifts from patient towards the computer.•We combined Conversation Analysis with mobile eye-tracking data.•Gaze shifts differ in interactional function and how they are accounted for.•Patient responses to physicians gaze shifts vary.•Research on physician gaze should take variations in gaze shifts into account.