Good communication between health professionals and patients is essential for high-quality health care. According to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) patient experience survey, communication with physicians ranked fifth out of eight categories in terms of correlation with overall patient satisfaction.1 However, today, finding an effective…
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Pioneering physician, author, and researcher Tom Ferguson (1943-2006) stated that “whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own health. We don’t need doctors or health systems to rule our bodies.” The core of patient-centered healthcare is to engage the patient in decisions about their own care…
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Healthcare is changing rapidly, and so is the need for continuous improvement in healthcare quality. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the six domains of quality interventions are: Leadership, Information, Regulation & Standards, Organizational Capacity, Models of Care, and Patient & Population Engagement.1 Maintaining quality has been linked to…
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In a disease-centric approach of medical consultation, the patient comes in with a disease and returns with a diagnosis, while in a patient-centric approach, the patient is diagnosed for the disease and is also understood more as a person, at the end of the consultation. It is documented that in…
Read more »Every patient is UNIQUE. Reason being: Patients are all people, with individual differences The same treatments and actions may not work for every patient Some patients may interpret what you say to them in different ways The Health Belief Model is a well researched description of patients’ beliefs about health…
Read more »“Handling a disease requires Knowledge… Handling a patient requires Wisdom.” The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and does not consist only of the absence of disease or infirmity.” According to this definition, for a doctor to be referred to…
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Patient adherence to medication
Prescription of medication is a key part of healthcare today, and because of medical advances and increased longevity, more patients are prescribed multiple medications. Patient adherence is critical to medicine-taking, but the process of taking medicine has been studied much less than the medications.1 According to the WHO (2003) report…
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