Doctor-patient communication: A review of the literature

L. M. L. Ong, J. C. J. M. de Haes, A. M. Hoos and F. B. Lammes

Social Science & Medicine, 1995, vol. 40, issue 7, 903-918

Abstract: Communication can be seen as the main ingredient in medical care. In reviewing doctor-patient communication, the following topics are addressed: (1) different purposes of medical communication; (2) analysis of doctor-patient communication; (3) specific communicative behaviors; (4) the influence of communicative behaviors on patient outcomes; and (5) concluding remarks. Three different purposes of communication are identified, namely: (a) creating a good inter-personal relationship; (b) exchanging information; and (c) making treatment-related decisions. Communication during medical encounters can be analyzed by using different interaction analysis systems (IAS). These systems differ with regard to their clinical relevance, observational strategy, reliability/validity and channels of communicative behavior. Several communicative behaviors that occur in consultations are discussed: instrumental (cure oriented) vs affective (care oriented) behavior, verbal vs non-verbal behavior, privacy behavior, high vs low controlling behavior, and medical vs everyday language vocabularies. Consequences of specific physician behaviors on certain patient outcomes, namely: satisfaction, compliance/adherence to treatment, recall and understanding of information, and health status/psychiatric morbidity are described. Finally, a framework relating background, process and outcome variables is presented.

Keywords: doctor-patient; communication; purposes; of; communication; interaction; analysis; systems; communicative; behaviors; patient; outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

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