What did the doctor say? Patients’ comprehension of allergy consultations in a French university hospital

Abstract

While health care specialists have a foundational allergy related knowledge, patients only have some socially and culturally derived notions of health and illness. Hence, sometimes, during the medical consultation, it may be difficult to find a common level of discourse between patients and health care providers.[1] A misunderstanding may be an obstacle to make informed decisions regarding care and adhering to treatment, and potentially breakdown the physician-patient relation.[2] The aim of the present monocentric study was to examine the comprehension of the physician’s discourse by patients, after an allergy consultation. We conducted a voluntary survey among all consecutive French speaking patients consulting in an Allergy Department of a French university hospital from December 2018 to April 2019. Collected data included patients’ age, sex, education, type of allergy they were suffering from and consulting for (i.e., food, respiratory, drug, hymenoptera, skin, other), and possible sources of information regarding their allergic condition. After the medical consultation, each participant rated (from 2 to 5) the degree of comprehension of different aspects of their visit and physicians’ attitude towards patients. We included open questions to receive comments and suggestions concerning the physician-patient relation. A multivariate logistic regression and content analysis were used to analyze provided information. A total of 200 questionnaires were collected. 31% of patients had a low comprehension of the allergists’ discourse while 69% had a good understanding. Variables influencing it included patients’ age, sex, level of education, duration of allergic symptoms and of following-up, number of associated allergies, type of allergies from which patients suffer, as well as ways to inform yourself about allergies. The present pilot study shows that allergists-patients communication should still be optimized. It allowed us to highlight which aspects for which patients should be implemented during an allergy consultation to improve the communication between patients and health care professionals. Our results may also help to target allergy related themes to be developed in order to communicate in real-life clinical settings, on scientific and generic Web sites and on social media. Further investigations are ongoing to verify differences in knowledge representation of allergy related concepts between physicians and allergic patients.