Following up on my post about what patients want upon their first meeting with a doctor (to be called by name, sometimes to shake hands), another study came out this week about another people issue among physicians: physicians who gab too much about themselves.

In a study where actors posed as new patients in secretly recorded visits, doctors talked about themselves in 34% of the encounters.

The researchers wrote in a report in Archives of Internal Medicine, "We found that physician self-disclosures were often non sequiturs, unattached to any discussion in the visit, and focused more on the physician's than the patient's needs."

In 79 percent of the encounters where the doctor went off 'gabbing' about himself or herself, the conversation never returned to the original topic and 11 percent of the time in these encounters, the doctor said things that competed with or offended the patient in some way.

I've met some chatty physicians and nurses. I appreciate the chatter if it is light, small talk designed to put me at ease. And like any other life situation, too much chatter, can be, well, too much.