INFLUENCE OF DOCTOR-PATIENT COMMUNICATION

INFLUENCE OF DOCTOR-PATIENT COMMUNICATION FOR MANAGING DIABETES IN PORT HARCOURT

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Patient-doctor communication is a very important and essential branch of clinical practice. Once it is handled appropriately, it will surely have no choice but to yield a curative eect for the patient, as has been validated in controlled studies. The rate or way in which a doctor conveys information to a patient is as
paramount as the information being communicated. Patients, who understand their doctors well are more likely to dictate health problems, understand their treatment options, enhance their behavior as needed, and follow their medication schedules. Previous and numerous research works have shown that effective
patient-doctor communication have the power to improve a patient’s health as quantifiable as many drugs, probably making available a partial explanation for the powerful placebo eect seen in clinical trials.
Over the years, doctors were seen to hone their “so” communication skills at patients’ bedsides, in their rounds as residents, and as students at the elbows of master clinicians. But today, the communication and interpersonal skills of the doctor-in-training are no longer seen as fixed personal styles that transcended during residency but, instead, as a set of measurable and changeable behaviors that can unfold. On the basis of some up and coming literature on the value of effective communication, medical students and postgraduates are continuously given instruction on methods and strategies for listening, explaining, questioning, counseling, and motivating.
Effective patient-doctor communication has been correlated with patient outcomes, together with satisfaction and care, adherence to treatment, and enhanced health status. Research has pointed out numerous factors that act or influence technical and interpersonal exchange in the patient-doctor
relationship, together with verbal and nonverbal communication, empathy and patient-centered care, patient counseling, efficient transmittal of information, rapport, and informed collaborative choice and patient participation. Effective communication has to do with better physical and functional
health outcomes among patients with diabetes, for instance, just because of relationships to patient adherence and enhanced chronic disease self management.
Patient commitment and participation in care, together with question asking, information substitute, and shared decision-making, are to a large extent related with the way the health of some patients turn out, specifically, when these are reinforced by doctors. Though patients dire considerably in the
information they make available, and doctors also dire in their responses to patients’ communication, demand for information, and zest to be effective participants in their care, patients seem to be more satisfied and experience lesser symptoms and health issues or challenges when they are able to have their needs for information met. Presently, health psychologists and medical educators have gone a long way in both research and otherwise to find out the best way to inculcate communication skills to doctors and medical students in order to enhance and improve the process and quality of patient care.Numerous training programs have been introduced and weighed, and the assessment of doctors’ communication skills has recently been added to medical board certification. These eorts to enhance and improve and also measure communication skills are timely, as the limitations or constraints to effective communication between patients and doctors are growing. Irrespective of the attestations showing that the average length of the patient-doctor encounter has not changed significantly over the years, specific survey data shows that there is a correlation between patient participation in capitulated health plans and shorter once visits.\

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