Team–Patient Interaction in Chronic Hemodialysis Units

We have tried to present briefly some of our impressions and findings about teams’–patients’ interaction and its influence on patients’ behaviour. It seems that teams defended hostility is a major problem in teams’–patients’ interactions, and that helping a team to use less defenses is beneficial to all. Having proved that patients’ behaviour is to a great extent determined by a number of personality traits, we tried to study the modification of this behaviour caused by the team. Our hypothesis has been that congruence in realistic expectations helps the patient to achieve his potential for adjustment, while discrepancies in expectations act like double-bind communications and patients do not adjust as well as could be expected. Some of the results also seem to point in the suggested direction, but real proof or disproof of the hypothesis can be obtained only by studying larger units as well as by improving the methodology.