Effective Patient/Practitioner Interaction

Patient/Practitioner Interaction

INTRO

Effective communication between patient and practitioner is vital to health promotion, disease prevention and treatment, and is an essential skill that can greatly improve the quality of care. It may also facilitate better relationships that can improve intermediate outcomes such as, treatment adherence, self management, trust and support within the health care system (Mauksch et al 2008). Effective Patient/Practitioner Interaction Sample Paper

One problematic behaviour in patients is not adhering to advice from their doctors. Some types of request can be easier to adhere than others. For example a short term request like taking a course of antibiotics is a lot easier to adhere than a long term request regime like diabetes. Individuals with social/ economic support from family, friends or caregivers, prove better adherence to treatment. However unstable living environments, lack of financial resources and cost of medication are all associated with decreased adherence to treatment.The relationship between doctor and patient is key to high adherence. All methods of measuring adherence have their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore in order to measure it accurately its best to use a range of methods. (Kalogianni 2011). Some methods used to measure compliance and adherence could include pill counting, electronic monitoring devices and data reviews (LaFleur et al 2004).