Patients, by providing feedback on doctors' interpersonal skills, have been able to contribute to improving the quality of the patient-doctor interaction. GP registrars and their supervisors value highly the role of patient feedback in interpersonal skill development.

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There is some evidence that patients' ratings of GP registrars' communication skills is aligned to ratings made by GP examiners as part of the summative RACGP Fellowship examination. However, further work is required to assess the strength of this alignment, given that patient-doctor communication is assessed more widely through new components of the examination.

There is growing interest in the adoption of patient-based assessments for the training of general practitioners. Consumers are in a unique position to comment on the quality of the doctor-patient interaction. Involving consumers as partners with general practice (GP) registrars and GP educators in the development of a patient feedback instrument enhances the relevance and acceptability of consumers as educators in GP training. It also demonstrates that social and medical agendas can be harmonized. Two patient feedback instruments on interpersonal skills were trialed in a training program for general practitioners in Australia. It was found that one of the instruments was more discriminating than the other because of its different response scale.

The concept of procedural justice could act as a rich and useful source of theoretical inspiration and practical experience in science and technology public policy-and decision-making. Its understanding of the functional relationship between policy and decision processes, their social environments and their outcomes, its interest in the fairness aspect of procedures and its wide range of applications could add a refreshing new perspective on traditional ways of thinking in a field which has long been dominated by 'technocratic' discourse. It must take into account that scientific and technological issues are varied and complex, and its application would require the careful, contextual consideration of the scientific-technological issues at stake.