• Posted August 12, 2026

'Normal' Can Backfire During Doctor/Patient Discussions

A positive bedside manner might sometimes be the worst thing for doctors to provide patients, researchers say.

Patients might come away thinking they don’t need treatment — even if they really do — after a doctor reassures them by saying their symptoms are “normal,” according to a study published Aug. 10 in Nature Human Behavior.

Telling patients that their symptoms were “normal” cut against their inclination to seek treatment for a wide range of health problems — from menopause and migraines to dental pain, seasonal allergies and elevated blood sugar levels.

"Doctors usually have a noble goal. They mean to ease anxiety, but somehow it backfires," senior researcher On Amir said in a news release. He is a professor of marketing at the Rady School of Management at the University of California-San Diego. 

The thought that doctors and patients might be interpreting their shared conversations differently arose as part of research into menopause, researchers said. Patients sometimes say they feel dismissed if doctors say their disruptive menopause symptoms are a normal part of aging.

To see if that extended to other health problems, researchers conducted a series of 14 experiments involving average people and healthcare providers.

In these studies, participants read realistic medical scenarios in which doctors either described symptoms as “normal” or did not.

The team measured participants' willingness to pursue treatment based on these "conversations," and compared their responses to what doctors would expect patients to do given the same scenarios.

“Providers expected that normalizing a patient's symptoms would increase their treatment likelihood, or at worst have no impact, but patients actually reacted in the opposite way," lead researcher Seyi Lawal, a doctoral student at UC-San Diego, said in a news release.

The problem boils down to the word “normal,” researchers concluded.

Doctors use "normal” to mean common and well understood — something that’s been seen before and isn’t unusual.

But patients often interpret “normal” as meaning acceptable or not worth treating — something they don’t have to worry about.

The experiments also revealed two simple ways to reduce this misunderstanding, researchers said.

Doctors can close the communication gap by explicitly recommending treatment even if they call something “normal,” researchers found.

They also can explain exactly what they mean by "normal" — that these symptoms aren’t unusual, but still require treatment.

Both approaches helped patients become more proactive, researchers found.

Patients also can do themselves a service by asking what a doctor means if they say a symptom is “normal,” researchers said. Don’t assume that treatment isn’t recommended and that you should just live with it.

More information

St. George’s University has more on good bedside manner for doctors.

SOURCE: University of California-San Diego, news release, Aug. 10, 2026