A study was conducted at a university outpatient primary care clinic in Switzerland to identify factors associated with difficult doctor-patient encounters. The data consist of 527 patient encounters, conducted by the 27 medical residents employed at the clinic. After each encounter, the attending physician completed two questionnaires: the Difficult Doctor Patient Relationship Questionnaire (DDPRQ-10) and the patient's vulnerability grid (PVG).

A higher score on the DDPRQ-10 indicates a more difficult encounter. The maximum possible score is 60 and encounters with score 30 and higher are considered difficult.

A model was fit for the association of DDPRQ-10 score with features of the attending physician: age, sex, and years of training. The model has \(F\)-statistic of 0.23 on 3 and 286 degrees of freedom, with \(p\)-value 0.876.

(a) As a group, are these physician features useful for predicting DDPRQ-10 score?

(b) Is there evidence of a significant association between DDPRQ-10 score and any of the physician features?

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Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 30.594 2.886 10.601 0.0000 age -0.016 0.104 -0.157 0.876 sexM -0.535 0.781 -0.686 0.494 yrs.train 0.096 0.215 0.445 0.656