rtant for compelling reasons: 85 percent of the information that physicians require in order to make a diagnosis is supplied to them by patients (Hampton et al. 1975), and patients' participation and understanding are fundamental for successful management of illness. Hart explains:
Accurate diagnosis requires that patients give intimate confidences to health workers, creating personal relationships on which continuing mutual responsibility can and should be built. We have good evidence that the quality of these continuing relationships profoundly affects compliance, dropout rates, investigation rates and willingness to "wait and see," hospital emergency admission rates, and average length of stay. (Hart 1992, 773-4)
Caring relationships in medicine are characterized by expressions of humaneness by physicians and other health care providers toward patients as evidenced by such qualities as interest, concern, compassion, sympathy, empathy, attentiveness, sensitiv
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