This may suggest that a greater stimulation of acupuncture points is required to elicit these expanded effects; or that the contextual factors within the acupuncture consultation, such as the interaction between the practitioner and patient, or the consultation setting, may work in conjunction with the stimulation of acupuncture points to elicit these expanded effects of care [ 42].
Why training practice status influences single-handed practices, but not partnership practices, is unknown, but we suggest that this difference in effect is due to a greater interaction between the single-handed practitioner and the resident doctor compared to the interaction seen in a partnership practice with several doctors.
Although interaction between the patient and the practitioner is suggested as the most robust component of context effect, behaviour, communication and interaction between patient and practitioner are difficult to change and may be hard to reproduce.
Further studies to develop tools assessing de qi based on the practitioner's feeling or senses should be conducted, and for that, various approaches considering the interaction between practitioners and patients and the historical meaning of de qi should be used.
The need for a close and constant interaction between general practitioners and specialists to monitor the clinical evolution of the disease and to refer patients who do not respond to standard treatment to specific care units cannot be emphasised enough.
The aim of our study is to compare patient and physician behaviour during routine consultations over a sixteen-year period in order to see how societal changes are reflected in the interpersonal interaction between general practitioners and their patients.
Field notes included both the content of answers to the questions in Table 1, as well as details about the environment and interaction between practitioners observed during the visit.
Optimal care of patients is dependent on good professional interaction between general practitioners and general hospital physicians.
We hypothesise that access to evidence-based knowledge, as expressed in the national guidelines, interaction between practitioners and key community members, and a problem-based planned process of change generated through facilitation support, will speed up the process of practitioners changing their behaviour (cluster level).
We used a two-way factorial linear GEE model (i.e., containing a main effect for both the Prevention Practitioner and Prevention Facilitator intervention and an interaction effect between the Prevention Practitioner and the Prevention Facilitator) to assess the impact of each intervention on SQUID.
