<p>Physicians must explain medical information to patients in a way that patients can understand, and physician use of analogies is one strategy that may help patients better understand health information. The present dissertation, guided by patient-centered communication, investigated whether the use of analogies by a physician within a medical encounter enhances participants’ objective understanding, perceived understanding, and perceptions of clarity regarding information about a health condition, and perceptions of the physician in areas of liking, similarity, satisfaction, and affective communication. The experiment consisted of eight conditions with a 2 (familiar/unfamiliar health condition) x 4 (no analogies, diagnosis analogies, treatment analogies, both diagnosis and treatment analogies) design, and the conditions varied by being exposed to the familiar or unfamiliar health issue first. An actor physician delivered a 1-2 minute video-recorded message, diagnosing the participants, serving as analogue patients, with the familiar or unfamiliar health issue. After watching the video and responding to the dependent variable measures based on their perceptions of the physician and video message, U.S. adult participants read a vignette of another physician diagnosing them with the other (familiar or unfamiliar) health issue, and answered the same dependent variable measures regarding the physician and vignette message. Open-ended questions sought to understand what participants remembered from the message and whether they recalled analogies in their retelling of the physician messages, whether they (dis)liked the analogies, what they (dis)liked about the physicians and whether these perceptions differed by analogy conditions, whether they remembered any analogies from their own clinicians, and in which medical situations they found provider analogies to be useful. Findings indicated when including health literacy as a covariate, analogies did not enhance perceptions of clarity, perceived understanding, or objective understanding. Regarding positive perceptions, analogies did not influence liking, similarity, satisfaction, or affective communication. There was no significant interaction between use of analogies and health issues, nor a difference in the effectiveness of the analogies based on whether they were used to describe diagnosis or treatment. Explanations containing analogies resulted in increased objective understanding for the vignette compared to the video format. When recalling the physician’s message, participants rarely recalled analogies, nor explicitly mentioned them as something they liked or disliked. However, some participants recalled clinician use of particular analogies, and most of them indicated they found clinician analogies to be useful, especially when describing complex health issues that are difficult for patients to understand. The dissertation results indicate that healthcare providers may want to use analogies when interacting with patients, which could potentially improve the doctor-patient relationship. </p>

The current study empirically tested four models of type II diabetic patient adherence, including wellness, screening, medication, and treatment adherence. Four mediators were proposed patient understanding, agreement, trust, and motivation were tested for each model. The current study is grounded in patient-centered communication, responding to Street’s (2013) call to model pathways between communication and patient health outcomes. Moreover, the study argues that adherence, for type II diabetic patients should be conceptualized as four distinct clusters of behavior (wellness, screening, medication, and treatment). A sample of (n=817) type II diabetes patients from the U.S. under the care of a medical provider and taking medication for their type II diabetes were surveyed. Findings from the present study indicate that the relationship between patient-centered communication and patient-health outcomes is mediated by proximal outcomes. The results contribute to our understanding or patient-centered communication, patient understanding, agreement, trust, and motivation, and adherence behaviors. Resulted indicated that while three of the four proposed hypotheses were supported, the most commonly studied type of adherence (medication), the relationship between patient-centered communication and medication adherence was not mediated. The current study ends with a discussion and implication of the findings as well as directions for future research

Purpose: We tested relationships between patient-centered communication (PCC), relatedness to health care providers, and autonomy around health care management among youth with and without mobility limitations (MLs) and examined whether the relationship between PCC and autonomy was mediated by how connected youth feel to their health care providers. Methods: Stratified multiple regression models were used to examine predicted associations for youth with and without MLs. Results: PCC was significantly associated with relatedness to health care providers and autonomy for managing health care among youth with and without MLs. After controlling for covariates, evidence of mediation was observed among youth without MLs but not for youth with MLs. Conclusions: For youth without MLs, mediation suggests that youth's connection to their health care provider contributes to higher levels of health-related autonomy. For youth with MLs, independent of feeling connected to health care providers, more frequent PCC resulted in higher levels of health-related autonomy.

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Bakgrund: Kommunikation innebär en relation mellan en sändare och en mottagare samt ett möte på en jämlik nivå. Att lyssna aktivt är en grundläggande kunskap inom omvårdnad och lyssnandet leder till att sedan kunna kommunicera effektivt. Vårdprofessioner kommunicerar på varierande sätt, har olika mål med kommunikationen samt att det finns flera samtalstekniker. Ett hinder i kommunikationen beskrivs som avsaknad av ett gemensamt språk eller att tolk används till hjälp. Syfte: Att belysa kommunikation, samtalet och lyssnandet i mötet mellan patient och vårdare i vårdmiljö. Metod: En beskrivande litteraturstudie. Resultat: Indelades i tre olika kategorier: Tala är silver, Tiga är guld och Att inte förstå varandra. God kommunikation ledde till trygghet och följsamhet hos patienter. Patient-centrerad kommunikation stimulerade empowerment och gav bättre hälsa. Samtal som redskap var det viktigaste redskapet och krävde träning för att utföras. Aktivt lyssnande ledde till nöjdare patienter, färre återbesök och en ökad tillfredställelse hos patienten. Att avbryta eller leda samtalet ledde till ineffektiv kommunikation. Hinder i kommunikationen kunde äventyra patientsäkerheten samt öka patientens lidande. Med tolk kunde de kulturella skillnaderna försvåras, men även att vara tre i en vårdrelation kunde leda till missförstånd. Slutsats: Kommunikation var basen i vårdmötet. Tala var silver men att tiga var guld. / Background: Communication is a relationship between a transmitter and receiver, and a meeting on an equal level. Active listening is a basic knowledge in nursing and listening leading to communicate effectively. Health care professionals communicate in different ways have different goals with communication and that there is several conversations techniques. One obstacle in communication is described as the absence of a common language or interpreter is used to help. Aim: Highlighting communication, conversation and listening in the meeting between patient and caregiver in the healthcare environment. Method: A descriptive literature-review. Result: Divided into three categories: Speech is silver, silence is golden, and Not understanding each other. Good communication led to patients felt safe and adherence. Patient-centered communication stimulated empowerment and provided better health. Conversation as a gear was the main tool and required training to be performed. Active listening led to more satisfied patients, fewer return visits and increased patient satisfaction. To interrupt or lead the conversation leads to ineffective communication. Barriers in communication could jeopardize patient safety and increase patient suffering. With an interpreter could be the cultural aspects complicate but also to be three in a health care relationship could lead to misunderstanding. Conclusion: Communication was the basis of health meeting. Speech was silver but silence was golden.

Patient-centred care has become an important model for health-care delivery, especially in cancer care. The implementation of this model includes patient-centred communication between the clinician and his or her patient. However, most research on patient-centred communication focuses on the clinicians’ initiative: what clinicians should do and what information they should seek to elicit from patients. It is equally important to recognize what each individual patient can contribute about his or her unique perspective on the disease, its treatment, and the effects on what is important to this patient. This thesis reports the development of a system for analyzing over 1500 utterances made by patients in eight video-recorded oncology consultations at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver Island Centre. The analysis distinguishes between biomedical information that the patient can provide and patient-centred information, which contributes the individual patient’s unique perspective on any aspect of his or her illness or treatment. The resulting analysis system includes detailed operational definitions with examples, a decision tree, and .eaf files in ELAN software for viewing and for recording decisions. Two psychometric tests demonstrated that the system is replicable: high inter-analyst reliability (90% agreement between independent analysts) on a random sample of the data set and cross-validation to the remainder of the data set. A supplemental idiographic analysis of each consultation illustrates the important role that patient-centred information played in these consultations. This system could be an important tool for teaching clinicians to recognize the individual information that patients can provide and its relevance to their care. / Graduate / 0992 / 0451 / 0350 / shealing@uvic.ca

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