Promoting a Consumer Orientation to Health Care and Health Promotion

Abstract

There is a compelling need to establish a consumer orientation to health care to address the troubling imbalance of power between providers and consumers in the modem health-care system. This power imbalance has systematically disenfranchised and marginalized health-care consumers. Adoption of a consumer orientation that focuses institutional attention and resources specifically on fulfilling the physical and psychological needs of the consumer, equalizing influence and control between health-care providers and consumers, and empowering consumers to make informed decisions about their health care will help promote social justice within the modem health-care system. Strategies are suggested to help providers and consumers develop and promote a consumer orientation in modem health care.

Health Psychology in Context

“…the power imbalance that exists between health-care professionals is replicated in relationships with consumers having profound implications for the delivery of care (Kreps, 1996).…”

Guideline implementation for breast healthcare in low- and middle-income countries

“…Breast health education messages must be designed carefully to be effective. The critical factor in strategic message design is adapting health education messages to meet the unique needs and communication orientations of specific audiences64 Careful audience analysis is essential to identifying the salient consumer characteristics for guiding message design 65. Involving women, their family members, key members of their social networks, and community representatives can increase the support and social encouragement for paying attention to, accepting, and using health education messages 66.…”

The Development and Partial Assessment of the Medical Communication Competence Scale

“…tlhat information exchange is critical to patients satisfying their health care objectives (e.g., Beisecker & Beisecker, 1990;Donaldson & Vanselow, 1996;Guttman, 1993;Kreps, 1996;Ratzan, 1996;Waitzkin, 1984), we expected certain MCCS subscales to reflect doctors' and patients' perceptions of the extent to which objectives were met. In particular, we expected satisfied patients to have higher self-competence in information seeking and verifying and higher other-competence in information giving than less satisfied patients.…”