Hekimlerin Sağlık Bilgisi Arayan Hastaya Uyguladıkları İletişim Stratejileri

Abstract

Objective: Today, health-seeking behavior is very common among patients. There are many studies examining this behavior of patients, but there are very limited studies on the attitudes of the physician to the patient who sought information. The aim of this study was to describe the communication strategies used by physicians for Internet-informed patients.Materials and Methods: This research is a qualitative study conducted in January-February 2018. In our study, 30 faculty members from Afyonkarahisar Health Sciences University, Faculty of Medicine have been interviewed. The participants were informed about the study and the interviews were voice-recorded with their consent. Semi-structured interview technique was used in these interviews. The in-depth interview method was used with open-ended questions. Two main questions were asked during the interviews: 1) How would you approach the patient who sought health information? and 2) Is there a case in hand? After content analysis, physicians were grouped according to their attitudes towards Internet-informed patients and quotations were made. Results: In this study, physicians were gathered in five groups according to the communication strategies they developed against the patient seeking information: Supporting the correct information (43.3%) , refused (26.7 %) , supporting after diagnosis (13.3%) , supporting (10.0%) and unresponsive group (6.7%). The supporters of the right information are those who accept only the health information obtained from the sources approved by the physician. The rejecting group rejects the information directly sought by the patient seeking health information, regardless of the source and accuracy of the information. The third group supports the search for information in the process after diagnosis. The supporting group is the group that directly supports health information-seeking behavior. The last group is unresponsive to the patient's search for information.Conclusion: In this study, it was observed that most of the physicians had a supportive attitude towards health information seeking behavior of patients. Further research is needed on how a physician-patient relationship model should be developed in order to meet the needs of patients who Internet-informed patients.