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  Awards Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Ctr. Boston Medical Center Boston University Brigham and Women's Hospital Broad Institute Cambridge Health Alliance Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Ctr. Children's Hospital Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Grants Harvard University Joslin Diabetes Center Lahey Clinic Mass. General Hospital Mass. Health Law McLean Hospital MIT New England Baptist Hospital Personnel Moves Public Health Research Short White Coat Tufts-New England Medical Center Tufts University UMass Memorial Medical Center University of Massachusetts VA Medical Centers    A Healthy Blog Running A Hospital Nature Network Boston SciBos - Corie Lok's blog Kevin, M.D. Blog, MD Dr. Flea's blog Nurse at small Your Child's Health Blog Healthy Children blog WBUR's CommonHealth Other Globe Blogs
Elizabeth Cooney is a health reporter for the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette.
Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
Scott Allen Alice Dembner Carey Goldberg Liz Kowalczyk Stephen Smith Colin Nickerson Beth Daley Karen Weintraub, Deputy Health and Science Editor, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor. Short White Coat blogger Ishani Ganguli  |
« Pediatrician blogger comments on ER overuse | Main | Today's Globe: Weis mistrial, icy trips to ER, grief, Merck vaccine lobbying, Gates-Canada AIDS vaccine push » Tuesday, February 20, 2007Should doctor-patient conversations be taped?Interesting suggestion from Blog, MD, the blog of Dr. Samuel C. Blackman, a Boston pediatric oncologist. He discusses a recent study in the British Medical Journal, which looked at whether mothers of infants in the ICU were able to recall information better when given audiotapes of their conversations with doctors. "A couple of years ago, when I was a relatively new 1st year fellow, a family brought a tape recorder into the room and set it down right in front of me," he writes. "I can’t remember whether or not they asked me if I would mind being taped (I think they did), but I remember being weirded out by it and telling them that I’d prefer not to have my every word recorded." But he's had a change of heart. "One would think that a tool as simple as a tape recorder would be more widely used for complex discussions such as informed consent for chemotherapy," he writes. "I believe that offering parents the opportunity to tape one’s important discussions with them telegraphs a message of confidence and trust, and would go a long way to establish rapport at a very important moment in a family’s life." He's eager for comments from parents of children with cancer and from cancer patients themselves. Posted by Gideon Gil at 08:19 PM
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