Even when doctors and patients have time to talk, you may not be hearing what he's saying.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—When you're staying in a hospital, things are beeping, nurses and doctors are constantly in and out of your room, the hallways are noisy, and the environment on the whole isn't conducive to in-depth discussions about your health. And that difficulty communicating could impede your recovery. A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine has found that doctors and patients are often on totally different pages when it comes to communicating about health conditions in hospitals. In most cases, patients don't even know their doctors' names.

THE DETAILS: The study authors interviewed 89 hospital patients about communication and whether or not they understood what their physicians told them. They subsequently interviewed those patients' 43 physicians to see how the physicians evaluated communication with their patients. And the researchers found a lot of discrepancies between what patients thought and what doctors thought, even when it came down to something as simple as knowing the doctor's name. While 67 percent of the physicians thought their patients knew their names, just 18 percent of patients could correctly name their doctor. By the same token, 77 percent of physicians thought patients knew their diagnosis upon leaving the hospital, while just 57 percent of patients said they knew what their condition was. Regarding medications, 67 percent of patients said they received a new medication in the hospital, yet a quarter of those people said their doctors never actually told them they would be getting one. Ninety percent of the patients reported receiving no warnings about adverse effects of the new medications, either. On a positive note, a majority of the patients, 88 percent, didn't feel as though doctors excluded them from conversations about their diagnoses. Still, although 98 percent of physicians said that they discussed patients' fears and anxieties with them, just 46 percent of patients reported that physicians did so.

WHAT IT MEANS: Despite the fact that new residents are trained to use understandable language and involve patients in discussions about their care, "we still have a long way to go," says the study's lead author Douglas Olson, MD, chief medical resident of the Yale Primary Care Program. "It was a little surprising to us that there was such a disconnect between patients and physicians." Part of this disconnect has to do with general "health literacy": the ability of average people to understand medical conditions and language. "The other part of it," says Dr. Olson, "is that these patients are sick. When we think of ourselves at home on the couch when we're sick or not feeling well, we're not the best learners or very receptive to understanding or comprehending new information." He adds that the patients in his study reported comprehending what their doctors were telling them, but when it came time to check out, they simply didn't know what was wrong with them. "They understand what's being said, but the retention of that information could be better."