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The purpose of this paper is to examine interruption patterns between residents and patients as well as the correlations between three categories of interruptions and patient satisfaction.

A total of 40 resident/patient consultations in a Canadian clinic were audiotaped, transcribed and analyzed for intrusive, cooperative and unsuccessful interruptions.

Residents made significantly more interruptions than patients, especially in the categories of intrusive interruptions. These findings provide support for situated identity theory. High correlations were found between residents and patients on all three categories of interruptions, providing unequivocal support for communication accommodation theory. Patient satisfaction was negatively correlated with residents' intrusive interruptions and positively correlated with residents' cooperative interruptions. Patient satisfaction was higher among patients those who inserted more cooperative interruptions; to increase patient satisfaction, it is necessary to raise patient participation in the medical consultation. In comparison with healthier patients, sicker patients were interrupted more frequently and were less satisfied with the way they were treated.

The negative correlations between residents' intrusive interruption and patient satisfaction, as well as the positive correlation between patient satisfaction and residents' cooperative interruption provides evidence that patients' perception of the medical consultation is shaped by the nature of interruptions.

The main purpose of the paper was to examine whether a short patient training session on various ways of requesting physicians to clarify a piece of previously elicited information during medical consultation would improve information communication, thus increasing patient satisfaction.

A total of 114 adult patients voluntarily participated in the study which was carried out at a clinic in Canada. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the experimental group and half to the control group. Males and females were evenly distributed in both experimental and control groups. Prior to their medical visits, participants in the experimental group received 10‐15‐minute face‐to‐face training, whereas the control group did not receive any training. The purpose of the training was to facilitate information transmission, with the intention to increase communication effectiveness and patient satisfaction. Immediately after their medical visits, all participants filled out a patient satisfaction questionnaire.

On all four dimensions of patient satisfaction (i.e. overall satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, communication satisfaction and expertise satisfaction), patients who received training scored significantly higher (were more satisfied) than patients who received no training. No consistent gender differences were found in patient satisfaction in both experimental and control groups.

This study applied a psycholinguistics theory, conversational grounding, to the field of patient education and achieved positive results.

The success of the short training session provides health practitioners with a new method to help patients communicate more effectively, thus increasing satisfaction in medical interviews.

Focuses on a means to elicit information from patients in medical consultations.