Waiting is the hardest part: Anticipating medical test results affects processing and recall of important information

David B. Portnoy

Social Science & Medicine, 2010, vol. 71, issue 2, 421-428

Abstract: Waiting for medical test results that signal physical harm can be a stressful and potentially psychologically harmful experience. Despite this, interventionists and physicians often use this wait time to deliver behavior change messages and other important information about the test, possible results and its implications. This study examined how "bracing" for a medical test result impacts cognitive processing, as well as recall of information delivered during this period. Healthy U.S. university students (N = 150) were tested for a deficiency of a fictitious saliva biomarker that was said to be predictive of long-term health problems using a 2 (Test Result) x 2 (Expected immediacy of result: 10 min, 1 month) factorial design. Participants expecting to get the test result shortly should have been bracing for the result. While waiting for the test results participants completed measures of cognitive processing. After participants received the test result, recall of information about the biomarker was tested in addition to cognitive measures. One week later, participants who were originally told they did not have the deficiency had their recall assessed again. Results showed that anticipating an imminent test result increased cognitive distraction in the processing of information and lowered recall of information about the test and the biomarker. These results suggest that delivering critical information to patients after administering a test and immediately before giving the results may not be optimal.

Keywords: USA; Experiment; Medical; testing; Bracing; Distraction; Medical; test; results; Recall (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(10)00330-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:2:p:421-428

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().