Healthcare workers today acknowledge that poor communication is perhaps one of the most prevalent problems in medicine. A number of studies have looked into the causes and outcomes of poor communication in medical facilities, and it appears from these studies that the problem is pressing enough to gain the attention of not just healthcare workers, but also the general public. One study conducted in the late 1990s found that poor communication was responsible for causing between 44,000 and 98,000 patient deaths annually in American hospitals alone. Other studies found that poor communication was one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in hospitals. These worrying reports have encouraged a number of worldwide efforts to exhaustively characterize the factors that lead to poor communication between physicians and their patients; by contrast, there has been comparatively less emphasis on analyzing poor communication outside the sphere of physician-patient interactions. In other words, poor communication between physicians and other physicians, between physicians and nurses, and between hospitals and other hospitals, has remained largely unexplored. The relative paucity of papers in these areas is due in part to the difficulty of conducting the necessary large-scale assessments that these topics of research require. As a result, the public remains largely unaware of the few findings that have been published in the literature. What did the study conducted in the late 1990s find about poor communication? A. It is the leading cause of the preventable patient deaths.B. It occurs the most frequently in the hospitals in the US.C. It leads to large numbers of patient deaths every year.D. It encourages a number of worldwide efforts to improve it.
Healthcare workers today acknowledge that poor communication is perhaps one of the most prevalent problems in medicine. A number of studies have looked into the causes and outcomes of poor communication in medical facilities, and it appears from these studies that the problem is pressing enough to gain the attention of not just healthcare workers, but also the general public.
One study conducted in the late 1990s found that poor communication was responsible for causing between 44,000 and 98,000 patient deaths annually in American hospitals alone. Other studies found that poor communication was one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in hospitals.
These worrying reports have encouraged a number of worldwide efforts to exhaustively characterize the factors that lead to poor communication between physicians and their patients; by contrast, there has been comparatively less emphasis on analyzing poor communication outside the sphere of physician-patient interactions. In other words, poor communication between physicians and other physicians, between physicians and nurses, and between hospitals and other hospitals, has remained largely unexplored.
The relative paucity of papers in these areas is due in part to the difficulty of conducting the necessary large-scale assessments that these topics of research require. As a result, the public remains largely unaware of the few findings that have been published in the literature.
What did the study conducted in the late 1990s find about poor communication?
- A. It is the leading cause of the preventable patient deaths.
- B. It occurs the most frequently in the hospitals in the US.
- C. It leads to large numbers of patient deaths every year.
- D. It encourages a number of worldwide efforts to improve it.
题目解答
答案
解析
本题考查对文章中特定研究结果的理解。解题思路是先在文章中定位到1990年代末的研究相关内容，然后分析每个选项与该研究结果的匹配度。
- 首先在文章中找到关于1990年代末研究的描述：“One study conducted in the late 1990s found that poor communication was responsible for causing between 44,000 and 98,000 patient deaths annually in American hospitals alone.”，即该研究发现仅在美国医院，每年就有44,000至98,000例患者死亡是由沟通不善导致的。
- 接着分析选项A：“It is the leading cause of the preventable patient deaths.”，文章中提到“Other studies found that poor communication was one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in hospitals.”，说明沟通不善是可预防死亡的主要原因之一，并非该1990年代末研究的发现，所以A选项错误。
- 分析选项B：“It occurs the most frequently in the hospitals in the US.”，文章中并没有提及沟通不善在美国医院发生的频率情况，所以B选项错误。
- 分析选项C：“It leads to large numbers of patient deaths every year.”，从研究发现的44,000至98,000例患者死亡数据可以看出，沟通不善每年导致大量患者死亡，C选项准确概括了研究结论，所以C选项正确。
- 分析选项D：“It encourages a number of worldwide efforts to improve it.”，文章中提到“These worrying reports have encouraged a number of worldwide efforts to exhaustively characterize the factors that lead to poor communication between physicians and their patients”，这里的“worrying reports”是泛指那些关于沟通不善的报告，并非特指1990年代末的这项研究，所以D选项错误。