Consultation analysis by triggers and symptoms (CATS). A new objective technique for studying consultations.

Doctor-patient consultation is a field of study important to general practice. The emphasis has tended to be on modes of exchange and subjective judgement of task achievement. More recently, a need to establish relationships between the information transferred and its mode of transfer has become clear. This paper describes such an approach with a specially devised scale (the consultation and analysis by triggers and symptoms (CATS) scale). The inter-rater reliability of the scale was established using a standard videotape. The CATS scale seems relatively easy to learn and to have relatively high inter-rater reliability.