Journal
PATIENT EDUCATION AND COUNSELING
Volume 104, Issue 1, Pages 186-193Publisher
ELSEVIER IRELAND LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2020.07.001
Keywords
Online health communities (OHCs); Health information seeking; Physician-patient communication; Affective empathy; Cognitive empathy; Patient compliance
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [71532002]
- National Social Science Foundation of China [18ZDA086]
- China Scholarship Council [201907090034]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [2019YJS056]
- Beijing Social Science Foundation Research Base (key project) [18JDGLA017]
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Patient health information seeking and physician-patient communication in online health communities have a positive impact on patient compliance, especially by increasing patients' affective and cognitive empathy.
Objective: Patient health information seeking and physician-patient communication in OHCs proved to have impacts on patient compliance, but related studies from psychological perspectives are limited. This study aims to investigate the impact of patient health information seeking and physician-patient communication in OHCs on patient compliance. Methods: This study established a research model and proposed six hypotheses. An anonymous investigation was conducted using Chinese OHCs. Confirmatory factor analysis, partial least squares, and structural equation modelling were used to test the hypotheses. Results: We received 371 responses, and 316 of them were valid. Patient health information seeking and physician-patient communication frequency in OHCs had positive impacts on patients' perceived affective and cognitive empathies, which positively impacted patient compliance. Conclusions: Patient compliance can be improved by patient health information seeking and physician-patient communication in OHCs and affective and cognitive empathies. Patients' perceived affective empathy is the preferred perspective to improve patient compliance. Practice implications: Physicians should encourage patients to seek health information and communicate with them through OHCs, be concerned about patients' experiences, feelings, and attitudes, understand patients' demands and mental states, and show their patients that they can feel patients' pain. Increasing physician-patient communication frequency in OHCs can help improve patient compliance. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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