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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Health Psychology: (A)Patient Practioner Relationship

(A)PATIENT PRACTIONER INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

  • Argyle (1975) suggests that non-verbal communication is 4 times as effective and powerful as verbal communication. Non-verbal communication can be used to assist speech, become a replacement for speech, to signal attitudes or emotional states.
  • Non-verbal communication plays an important role in in patient practitioner relationship. Dressing sense is powerful way to communicate non-verbally.

Study:McKinstry and Wang (1991)

They showed pictures of doctors to patients attending surgeries. The pictures were of the same male and female doctors either dressed formally (traditional white coat over suit or shirt) or informally (jeans and open-necked shirt, pink trousers, gold earrings etc) The patients were asked how happy they would be to see each doctor and how much confidence they would have in each one of them. The formally dressed doctors got higher preference rating than informally dressed doctors. This was particularly the case when the patients were elderly or professional class.
 

Study: Dimatteo and DiNicola(1982)

They argue that failures in medical communication exist due to a lack of basic courtesy on the part of practitioners such as saying "hello" and "goodbye", telling patients where to hang their coats etcetera.
They say that even though such actions may take a few minutes of the practitioner's time, they will appear warm and supportive to the patient and therefore will aid the treatment process.

Two styles adopted by practitioners

  1. Doctor Centered: Doctor leads the discussion. Prescribes treatment while the patient is the passive recipient of the treatment.
  2. Patient Centered: Doctor listens to the patient. Encourages the patient to participate in his/her own treatment decisions. In this case the patient is active recipient of treatment.
 
 
 
 

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