Getting the Most out of the Clinical Encounter: The Four Habits Model

by Richard M. Frankel, Ph.D. and Terry Stein, M.D.
Medical interviewing is the foundation of medical care and is the clinician?s most important activity. A growing body of evidence suggests that clinicians use distinctive, describable behaviors to conduct medical interviews. This article describes four patterns of behavior that we term Habits and reviews the research evidence that links each Habit with both biomedical and functional outcomes of care.