Personality assessment in today's health care environment: therapeutic alliance and patient satisfaction.

This article addresses the role of personality assessment-specifically the Rorschach (Exner, 2002)-]in the context of the health care industry's increased focus on patient satisfaction. When providing psychotherapy, a challenge to providing patient-centered care turns on understanding and acting on the key aspects of the patient's personality that are crucial to forming an effective alliance. This article includes a description and examples of how personality assessment can enhance therapists' understanding of the ideational, affective, and self-control aspects of complicated patients' problem-solving styles. This enhanced understanding in turn can lead to improved therapeutic alliance between therapists and patients and to increased patient satisfaction with their care. How to provide feedback to the therapist also is addressed.