IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v21y1985i8p915-919.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Improving the efficiency of patients' comprehension monitoring: A way of increasing patients' participation in general practice consultations

Author

Listed:
  • Robinson, E. J.
  • Whitfield, M. J.

Abstract

The aim of the investigations reported was to examine the effects of helping patients to check their understanding of instructions and advice given during their consultations with general practitioners. Three groups of patients were both tape recorded during their consultation and interviewed immediately afterwards. The groups differed in the written information they were given prior to their consultations. The 'Normal' group were informed only that the researcher was interested in how well doctors and patients understand each other. The 'Permission' group was explicitly invited to raise queries with the doctor during their consultation. The 'Guidance' group was asked to use two specified strategies to check their understanding of instructions and advice given by the doctor. We coded the frequency of questions and comments about treatment which patients produced during their consultations, and the accuracy and completeness of their subsequent accounts of the recommended treatment. The Normal and Permission groups did not differ in either respect. The Guidance group produced significantly more questions and comments than the Normal group and gave more complete and accurate accounts of the recommended treatment. A partial replication in a different practice produced consistent results.

Suggested Citation

  • Robinson, E. J. & Whitfield, M. J., 1985. "Improving the efficiency of patients' comprehension monitoring: A way of increasing patients' participation in general practice consultations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 21(8), pages 915-919, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:21:y:1985:i:8:p:915-919
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(85)90148-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:21:y:1985:i:8:p:915-919. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.