Your
Relationship with Your Doctor: I. Why It’s Important
by Wayne M. Sotile, Ph.D.
How's
Your Relationship with Your Physician?
(Check which of the following statements apply to you and your
relationship with your physician.)
How well does your doctor listen to you?
_____Very Well
_____Somewhat well
_____Not very well
_____Not well at all
_____I'm not sure
Are you confident in your doctor?
_____Yes
_____No
Your answers to these questions may have much to do with your
future health. Read on to find out why.
Research
has shown crucial links between the quality of doctor-patient
communication, patient confidence in their physicians, and patients’
willingness to follow medical advice. In fact, patients consider
communication to be one of the top competencies a physician should
possess, yet they frequently rate their own physicians’
communication skills to be unsatisfactory.
In a February, 2001 national telephone survey conducted by the
physician education web site Docrates.org in partnership with
Portrait of America, 947 randomly selected adults answered the
same questions that opened this article. The survey found a strong
relationship between a doctors’ listening skills and patient
confidence in the physician. Compare your answers to theirs:
Just over half (53%) said their doctor listens to them “very
well, ” and, of these, 93% said they are confident in
their doctor.-
Thirty-five percent said their doctor listens to them “somewhat
well,” and, of these, 60% said they are confident in their
doctor.
-
About one in ten (9%) said that their doctor listens to them
“not very well.” Of these, only 12% expressed confidence
in their doctor.
-
Of the less than one percent (0.4%) who said their doctor listens
to them “not well at all,” none said they were confident
in their doctor.
- Finally,
approximately 3% stated that they were “not sure”
about their doctor’s listening skills, and 11% of them
were confident in their doctors.
Why
is This Important?
How you communicate with your physician is a crucial aspect of
your health care; it can affect how you manage your health problems
throughout the course of your rehabilitation. In this sense, communication
with your physician can affect your health. In the short run,
good communication leads to higher levels of satisfaction with
medical care and better recall of medical advice. If you have
good communication with your physicians, you are also more likely
to follow their advice.
In
the long-term , doctor-patient communication can save your life.
This article was adapted from information presented more fully
in Thriving With Heart Disease, by W. Sotile with R Cantor-Cook.
New York: The Free Press, 2003. Copyright W. Sotile, 2003. All
rights reserved.
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