Physician gaze shifts in patient-physician interactions: functions, accounts and responses.

Abstract

Physician gaze towards patients is fundamental for medical consultations. Physicians' use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) affects their gaze towards patients, and may negatively influence this interaction. We aimed to study conversation patterns during gaze shifts of physicians from the patient towards the EHR. Outpatient consultations (N = 8) were eye-tracked. Interactions around physician gaze shifts towards the computer were transcribed. We found that physician gaze shifts have different interactional functions, e.g., introducing a topic switch or entering data into the EHR. Furthermore, physicians differ in how they account for their gaze shifts, i.e., both implicitly and explicitly. Third, patients vary in treating the gaze shift as an indication to continue their turn or not. Our results suggest that physician gaze shifts vary in function, in how physicians account for them, and in how they influence the conversation. Future research should take into account distinctions when relating gaze to patient outcomes. Physicians may be aware of the interactional context of their gaze behaviour. Patients respond differently to various types of gaze shifts. How physicians handle gaze shifts can therefore have different consequences for the interaction.