Changes in Doctor–Patient Relationships in China during COVID-19: A Text Mining Analysis

Jiaxuan Li, Patrick Cheong-Iao Pang (), Yundan Xiao and Dennis Wong
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Jiaxuan Li: Faculty of Applied Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao SAR 999078, China
Patrick Cheong-Iao Pang: Faculty of Applied Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao SAR 999078, China
Yundan Xiao: Research Institute of Forest Resource Information Techniques, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China
Dennis Wong: Faculty of Applied Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao SAR 999078, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 20, 1-14

Abstract: Doctor–patient relationships (DPRs) in China have been straining. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the relationships and interactions between patients and doctors are changing. This study investigated how patients’ attitudes toward physicians changed during the pandemic and what factors were associated with these changes, leading to insights for improving management in the healthcare sector. This paper collected 58,600 comments regarding Chinese doctors from three regions from the online health platform Good Doctors Online (haodf.com, accessed on 13 October 2022). These comments were analyzed using text mining techniques, such as sentiment and word frequency analyses. The results showed improvements in DPRs after the pandemic, and the degree of improvement was related to the extent to which a location was affected. The findings also suggest that administrative services in the healthcare sector need further improvement. Based on these results, we summarize relevant recommendations at the end of this paper.

Keywords: doctor–patient relationship; doctor reviews; sentiment analysis; word frequency analysis; text mining; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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