NEW ORLEANS — Maintaining as much eye contact with patients as possible improves doctors’ relationships with their patients, reduces the time spent on EHRs outside patient settings and improves one’s ‘computer-side manner,’ according to a presenter at the American College of Physicians Internal Medicine Meeting.

“Eye contact is a very big predictor of a good patient-doctor relationship. The computer can be seen as a distraction, a new sort of third-party in the room,” Wei Wei Lee MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago told Healio Family Medicine. “Make sure your back isn’t to the patient the whole office visit and make sure there’s eye contact and that your eyes aren’t locked on the screen the entire office visit. These important nonverbal cues really help to set the stage for your relationship.”