Health Communication: Physician-Patient Critique

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  • Created by: Psych951
  • Created on: 07-01-19 17:43

Health Communication: Physician-Patient Critique

Advantages

  • Evidence for the impact of both physician and patient factors impacting communication
  • Can improve physiological adjustment, recovery, accuracy of diagnosis and satisfaction for both
  • Measures of perceived communication styles were associated with better health (Wanzer et al 2004)
  • Study confirmed that it is the specific communication rather than simply mutual decision making that promotes health, across a good sample, and also demonstrated benefits for self-management and link between communication and understanding (Heisler et al 2002)
  • Found that communication linked to physician's ability to predict patient satisfaction

Disadvantages

  • Physicians aren't very good at judging other peoples' perceptions of their symptoms
  • Increase in complaints (GMC 2012)
  • Research is lacking regarding physician training and patient communication training is very difficult to administer
  • Technology and societal changes mean that patient's needs and expectations have changed
  • There are many barriers to good communication, some which may be beyond control e.g. culture, language, low responsiveness
  • Studies investigating importance of physician communication often use self-report from the patient rather than physician, so biased evidence
  • Often focus on patient's reports of communication which may differ for the exact same conversation - Unreliable

Evaluation

Clear that physician and patient communication factors impact the health care process, however a lack of clear evaluation measures and training limits the usefulness of such knowledge particularly in a time where patient needs are diverse

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