Arnstein Finset

University of Oslo · Department of Behavioural Sciences in Medicine

Objective Estimate the prevalence of anxiety disorders, depressive disorders and apathy two years after stroke, examine their longitudinal course, describe the course of psychological distress through two years after stroke, and evaluate Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale HADS-A and HADS-D cut-off scores of ≥4 and ≥ 8 for detection of anxiety an...

Background There is evidence that empathy decreases as medical students go through clinical training. However, there are few in-depth studies investigating the students’ own experiences when trying to empathize in concrete clinical encounters. We therefore wanted to explore medical students’ perceptions, experiences, and reflections when empathizin...

This study aimed to explore healthcare providers' experiences of their communication and interaction with conscious patients on mechanical ventilation in intensive care. Nurses, physicians, and physiotherapists were interviewed after they had been video recorded in naturally occurring interactions with patients. The interviews were analyzed using a...

Purpose: Efficient physician communication with adolescent cancer survivors (ACS) during follow-up consultations is important to enable survivors to take responsibility for their health. The present study had two aims: to develop a communication tool to enhance structured consultations and improve clinician communication in follow-up consultations,...

Background: There is evidence that self-reported empathy decreases as medical students go through clinical training, but few in-depth studies have investigated students’ own experiences with empathy during medical interviews. We therefore wanted to explore this topic qualitatively by studying medical students’ perceptions, experiences, and reflecti...

Background Lifestyle changes are important for prevention and treatment of many common diseases, and doctors have an important role in the lifestyle counselling of patients. It is important to know more about factors influencing lifestyle counselling. Aim To investigate the frequency of counselling about physical activity compared to that about al...

Aims and objectives The aim of this study was to explore the interaction between mechanically ventilated patients and healthcare personnel in intensive care units (ICUs), with a special emphasis on patients’ initiative to communicate. Background Patients on mechanical ventilation in ICUs tend to be less sedated today compared to standard care in t...

Objective: To explore what peer supporters, patients and their relatives want and gain from peer support in cancer care. Methods: Focus group interviews with peer supporters, and in-depth interviews with peer supporters, patients and relatives (N=38) and observations of daily activities in a Vardesenter ("Cairn Centre"). Results: Peer supporte...

Purpose: Given childhood cancer survivors' risk of treatment-induced late effects, long-term follow-up care is recommended. We explored experiences with late effects-related care and preferences for long-term follow-up care among adult survivors of childhood malignant lymphoma in Norway. Methods: We conducted five focus group interviews with 34...

Objective: To investigate how patients' autonomic responses are related to verbal or non-verbal communication during clinical encounters. Methods: The SCOPUS database was searched to identify papers. Studies were included if measures of autonomic arousal were related to patients' emotions or patient-clinician interaction during clinical consulta...

Background This prospective study from end of medical school through internship investigates the course and possible change of self- reported self-efficacy in communication skills compared with observers’ ratings of such skills in consultations with simulated patients. Methods Sixty-two medical students (43 females) from four Norwegian universitie...

Objective To discuss the theoretical and empirical framework of VR-CoDES and potential future direction in research based on the coding system. Methods The paper is based on selective review of papers relevant to the construction and application of VR-CoDES. Results VR-CoDES system is rooted in patient-centered and biopsychosocial model of health...

The clinician-patient relationship is asymmetric in the sense that clinicians and patients have different roles in the medical consultation. Yet, there are qualities of reciprocity and mutuality in many clinician-patient encounters, and we suggest that such reciprocity may be related to the phenomenon of empathy. Empathy is often defined as the cap...

Purpose: Little is known about the emotional concerns expressed by adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients in consultations when a diagnosis of cancer is delivered. Here, we investigated the content of such concerns and how health care providers respond to them. Method: We audio-recorded nine consultations with AYA cancer patients (ages: 12-25...

Delivering the bad news of a cancer diagnosis to adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients who display strong emotions is particularly challenging not the least because AYAs are at a vulnerable developmental stage. Due to the lack of research on how to personalize the delivery of bad news to AYA patients’ emotions we report a case study of the comm...

Objective: We investigated vocal characteristics associated with physiologically determined stressful episodes by means of post-hoc acoustic analyses of speech recorded in a clinical setting. Our research addressed the understudied question of which vocal features may serve as cues naturally occurring stress and is the first to explore this issue...

Objective: This study aimed to examine how emotional cues/concerns are expressed and responded to in medical consultations with adolescent and young adults (AYA), an understudied patient group, at the time of cancer diagnosis. Methods: Nine consultations in which AYA patients aged 12-25 years were informed about their cancer diagnosis and treatm...

Purpose: Information about late effects is a prerequisite for survivors of childhood cancers to engage in self-management of their health. Yet, many lack such knowledge. This study investigated to what extent: (1) potential late effects were discussed with adolescent and young adult (AYA)-aged survivors (of pediatric cancer), and (2) information a...

To explore practices regarding communication about emotional concerns in follow-up consultations with adolescent cancer survivors and pediatrician. Seven video-taped follow-up consultations with adolescent survivors which contained many examples of emotional cues and concern were analyzed according to principles of conversation analysis. During tal...

People who have sustained severe multiple injuries have reduced health and functioning years after the injury. For people who have sustained severe injuries, an optimal degree of predictability in future functioning and health-related quality of life is important. The main aim was to study the impacts of demographic- and injury-related factors as w...

Childhood cancer survivors need information about risks of late effects to manage their health. We studied how and when adult, long-term survivors prefer to receive information about late effects. Five focus-groups with adult survivors of childhood lymphomas who had completed routine follow-up care and participated in a preceding follow-up study (n...

The study aims to develop a teachable consultation model for encounters with patients in emotional distress. The Expanded Four Habits Model is designed for improving the consultations with patients in emotional distress or with other psychosocial concerns. The model represents an integration between the concept of Six Skills (Stensrud T, Gulbrandse...

Objective The present study aimed to explore (a) to what extent adolescent cancer survivors express emotional concerns during follow-up consultations, (b) the content of these expressions, and (c) the responses to their concerns by the paediatric haemato-oncologists (oncologists).Methods Sixty-six follow-up consultations between adolescent patients...

Patients with advanced cancer commonly experience multiple somatic symptoms and declining functioning. Some highly prevalent symptoms also overlap with diagnostic symptom-criteria of depression. Thus, assessing depression in these patients can be challenging. We therefore investigated 1) the effect of different scoring-methods of depressive symptom...

Background: There is a need for valid and comprehensive measures of parental influence on children's energy balance-related behaviours (EBRB). Such measures should be based on a theoretical framework, acknowledging the dynamic and complex nature of interactions occurring within a family. The aim of the Family & Dietary habits (F&D) project was to...

Background Empathy is important in ensuring the quality of the patient-physician relationship. Several studies have concluded that empathy declines during medical training, especially during the third year. However, there is little empirical research on what may influence a medical student’s empathy. In addition, studies of empathy in medicine have...

Talk-in-interaction is characterized by a pattern of turn-taking between conversational partners and rapid shifts from turn to turn without pauses between turns. During talk-in-interaction speakers constantly adjust to one another's terminology, repeat expressions from turn to turn and imitate each other's verbal as well as nonverbal behavior, a ph...

Background There is little research on the impact of emotion regulation on patient participation in rheumatology. Alexithymia is a well researched conceptualization of dysfunctional emotion regulation, characterised by difficulties in identifying and naming emotions. Findings on alexithymia and health care utilization are inconsistent, but patients...

Research literature on how communication between clinicians and patients may impact pain perception was reviewed. Papers were selected from searches of databases, from reference lists of the papers identified in the search and by personal knowledge of the literature.The studies reviewed provided mixed results regarding the effect of clinicians' com...

Objective: The present study aimed to explore (a) to what extent adolescent cancer survivors express emotional concerns during follow-up consultations, (b) the content of these expressions, and (c) the responses to their concerns by the paediatric haemato-oncologists (oncologists). Methods: Sixty-six follow-up consultations between adolescent patie...

To describe sleep experiences after stroke using subjective and objective indicators and identify possible gender differences in sleep in the acute phase and at 6-month follow-up. Sleep disturbances after stoke are recognized, but poorly described. Gender differences in sleep exist in other populations, but have not been reported after stroke. A lo...

While children with chronic illness can experience many physical, functional, and psychosocial symptoms and problems, they do not have the same verbal skills as adults to communicate about distressing symptoms, leaving them at particular risk that their problems remain under-diagnosed and treated. This study investigated the effects of an interacti...

BACKGROUND: Internet-based interventions are increasingly used to support self-management of individuals with chronic illnesses. Web-based interventions may also be effective in enhancing self-management for individuals with chronic pain, but little is known about long-term effects. Research on Web-based interventions to support self-management fo...

: Patients are experts of their own symptoms and worries, but tend not to express their concerns spontaneously in the consultation. Even when emotions are brought up, they are discussed briefly. : The objective of this study was to examine the impact of an interactive tailored patient assessment (Choice) on communication of emotional cues and conce...

Internet-based interventions are increasingly used to support self-management of individuals with chronic illnesses. Web-based interventions may also be effective in enhancing self-management for individuals with chronic pain, but little is known about long-term effects. Research on Web-based interventions to support self-management following parti...

Objective: To examine the long term impact of a communication skills intervention on physicians' communication self-efficacy and the relationship between reported self-efficacy and actual performance. Methods: 62 hospital physicians were exposed to a 20-h communication skills course according to the Four Habits patient-centered approach in a cro...

Emotional topics are common in medical consultations as well as in psychotherapy. Patients often present to the doctors and therapists their hopes, uncertainties, feelings, and worries. However, patients often will not refrain from conveying their emotions explicitly in the consultation. Rather, emotions may be expressed as an indirect hint about u...

Background Internet-based interventions using cognitive behavioral approaches can be effective in promoting self-management of chronic pain conditions. Web-based programs delivered via smartphones are increasingly used to support the self-management of various health disorders, but research on smartphone interventions for persons with chronic pain...

Objective To test a communication skills training program teaching general practitioners (GPs) a set of six evidence-based mental health related skills. Research methodology A training program was developed and tested in a pilot test-retest study with 21 GPs. Consultations were videotaped and actors used as patients. A coding scheme was created to...

Background: To test the effect of Choice, an interactive tailored patient assessment (ITPA) tool on the number and types of symptoms addressed during consultations with cancer patients, cancer patients' active participation during consultation with clinicians, and clinicians' responses. Method: A total of 193 consultations were audio taped and c...

Background General practitioners (GPs) often see patients presenting with mental health problems, but their training regarding mental health treatment varies. GPs' communication skills are of particular importance in these consultations, and communication skills training of GPs has been found to improve patients' mental health. To tailor a communic...

To review research on emotional communication in medical interviews regarding predictors, physiological correlates and effects of clinicians' responses to patients' cues and concerns and individual differences among patients. A selective review of research literature on emotional communication in medical interviews was conducted. Four questions reg...

The aim of the study was to develop and test the feasibility of a three months web-based intervention, delivered by a smartphone to support self-management in patients with type 2 diabetes. The intervention included use of a smartphone enabling access to daily web-based diaries and individualized written situational feedback. The participants regis...

Interactive Health Communication Applications (IHCAs) are increasingly used in health care. Studies document that IHCAs provide patients with knowledge and social support, enhance self- efficacy and can improve behavioural and clinical outcomes. However, research exploring patients' experiences of using IHCAs has been scarce. The aim of this study...

To explore first-time stroke patients' degree of independence in activities of daily life in relation to sleep and other essential variables that might influence activities of daily life. Sleep has received little attention in rehabilitation of activities of daily life in stroke patients. This is a longitudinal survey and observational study design...

To describe the trajectory of physical and mental health from injury to 5 years postinjury for patients with multiple trauma, and to examine predictors of recovery of physical and mental health. A prospective, longitudinal cohort study with data from injury (baseline), the return home (t1), and 1 (t2), 2 (t3), and 5 (t4) years. Hospital and communi...

To (1) investigate emotional cues and concerns (C&C) of cancer patients expressed in e-mail communication with oncology nurses in an online patient-nurse communication service (OPNC), and (2) explore how nurses responded to patients' C&C. 283 e-messages sent from 38 breast and 22 prostate cancer patients and 286 e-responses from five oncology nurse...

. Little is known about the course of poststroke fatigue. Objectives . To describe the course of poststroke fatigue in relation to the patient's level of physical functioning, depressive symptoms, and self-reported history of prestroke fatigue. Methods . A longitudinal study using structured face-to-face interviews, questionnaires, and patients' me...

To evaluate the effects of a mindfulness-based group intervention, the Vitality Training Programme (VTP), in adults with inflammatory rheumatic joint diseases. In a randomised controlled trial, the VTP-a 10-session mindfulness-based group intervention including a booster session after 6 months-was compared with a control group that received routine...

Studies indicate that physicians do not respond adequately to patients' emotional issues. Physician sensitivity to patient affect has not been much explored. To describe specialist physicians' sensitivity to patient affect and satisfaction. Cross-sectional study of physicians' and patients' postvisit questionnaire statements about patient affective...

Purpose: Despite increasing attention to the field of shared decision making, the medical literature provides little support and no tool to identify and classify decisions in patient-physician encounters. Addressing this void we are developing a typology to provide support in exploring links between the quality of clinical communication and medical...