Many Patients Withhold Information From Clinicians

Many patients intentionally withhold information from clinicians, according to a study published online Nov. 30 in JAMA Network Open.

Andrea Gurmankin Levy, Ph.D., from Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut, and colleagues recruited two national nonprobability samples (Amazon's Mechanical Turk [MTurk], 2,096 respondents, and Survey Sampling International [SSI], 3,011 respondents) to participate in an online survey. The authors examined the frequency of patients failing to disclose to clinicians information relevant to their care.

Overall, 2,011 MTurk respondents and 2,499 SSI respondents were included in the analyses. The researchers found that 81.1 and 61.4 percent of MTurk and SSI participants, respectively, avoided disclosing at least one type of information. The most common occurrences were disagreeing with the clinician's recommendation (45.7 and 31.4 percent, respectively) and not understanding the clinician's instructions (31.8 and 24.3 percent, respectively). Not wanting to be judged or lectured (81.8 and 64.1 percent, respectively), not wanting to hear how harmful the behavior is (75.7 and 61.1 percent, respectively), and being embarrassed (60.9 and 49.9 percent, respectively) were the most commonly reported reasons for nondisclosure. In both samples, the likelihood of reporting withholding information was increased for participants who were female, were younger, and had worse self-rated health.

"If patients are withholding information from clinicians as frequently as this research suggests, then clinicians are routinely not receiving the information that they need to provide high-quality care to patients, especially sicker patients," the authors write.

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