Do Physicians’ Attitudes towards Patient-Centered Communication Promote Physicians’ Intention and Behavior of Involving Patients in Medical Decisions?

Abstract

Promoting patient-centered communication among physicians is one core strategy for improving physician–patient relationships and patient outcomes. Our study aims to understand the physicians’ attitudes towards patient-centered communication and its effects on physicians’ intention and behavior of involving patients in medical decisions in primary care in China. One cross-sectional study was conducted in primary facilities in Hubei province, China, from December 2019 to January 2020, where physicians’ attitudes towards patient-centered communication were measured by the Chinese-revised patient–practitioner orientation scale. Multilevel ordinal logistic regression was conducted for estimating the effects of physicians’ attitudes on their intention and behavior of patient involvement in medical decisions. Six hundred and seventeen physicians were investigated for the main study. Physicians had a medium score of patient-centered communication (3.78, SD = 0.56), with relatively high caring subscale score (4.59, SD = 0.64), and low sharing subscale score (3.09, SD = 0.75). After controlling physicians’ covariates, physicians’ attitudes towards patient-centered communication was significantly associated with a higher intention of involving patients in medical decisions (OR > 1, p = 0.020). Physicians’ positive attitudes towards patient-centered communication affected their intention of involving patients in medical decisions, which implies the importance of taking the physicians’ attitudes into account for the accomplishment of patient involvement processes.

¿Cómo valorar la atención centrada en la persona según los profesionales? Un estudio Delphi

“…La medición de la actitud de los profesionales hacia la ACP puede ser de utilidad para evaluar progresos en la formación postgrado 35 y predecir la participación del profesional en la toma de decisiones compartidas con el paciente 36 . Por otra parte, puede ser de ayuda para que los MF tengan un enfoque menos biologicista y recojan más información sobre los estilos de vida del paciente 37 .…”

Applying Theory of Planned Behavior to Understand Physicians’ Shared Decision-Making With Patients With Acute Respiratory Infections in Primary Care: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…A A two-stage cluster sampling was applied in this study, which was described in detail and published in one recent research conducted by the research team (Wang et al, 2020). The first stage involved a random selection of five cities (the provincial capital Wuhan and four prefecture-level cities in Hubei province).…”

Encouraging Patient Engagement Behaviors from the Perspective of Functional Quality

“…In practice, however, this level of patient engagement is very difficult to reach. The reason is that patients prefer to rely on physicians to make diagnostic decisions due to their limited medical knowledge [13], and physicians are often less likely to involve patients in diagnostic decisions due to contextual factors such as their overwhelming workload and time constraints [9]. Previous studies suggested that patients are still able to engage in high-contact professional services and add value by engaging in compliance behaviors [12,[14][15][16] and loyalty behaviors [12].…”

“…Medical services are a type of high-contact professional service, characterized by high levels of communication time, intimacy of communication, richness of information exchanged, and a large knowledge gap between providers and patients [7,8]. Patient psychological processes and consequent behaviors are easily influenced by functional aspects across the service process [9]. Therefore, it is necessary to propose a model to describe the formation process of PEBs based on patient experience and the feelings derived from the high-contact professional process of medical service delivery.…”