Running head: Research Paper
Effects of patient/physician communication: Discrimination against patients due to illness
Lakeshia Coman
University of Memphis
Abstract:
Everyday individuals are placed in the hospital due to an illness such as sexual transmitted diseases, HIV, and AIDS. Patients can range from age, gender, and race. On more occasions’ patients who are African American living with HIV and/or AIDS face discrimination more frequently than individuals of different ethnicities. Most of the time, patients face the uncertainty of their illness that result in forms of depression and anxiety and place their trust solely into their physicians and healthcare staff. When communication is poor and physicians plus their healthcare staff possess their own preconceived biased, individuals are faced with unwanted attitudes and discrimination due to their illness. Throughout this narrative, I will discuss the battle establishing proper communication between patients and physicians discuss the obstacles patients face in understanding their illness and the affects it may have on them, and the discrimination they may face due to their illness. Through research, many experts have findings that show through positive communication patients feel comfort in knowing that they will be properly cared for.
Key words: Depression (postpartum), HIV/AIDS, anxiety, communication
In most healthcare establishments, patients are admitted due to a critical condition. Most of the time patients may face anxiety due to the uncertainty of their illness. It is up to healthcare staff to help ease the fear of the unknown so that the patient can be more receptive to treatment provided. Many illnesses are accompanied with a host of side effects that can cause patients to endure extreme pain and discomfort. While in the hospital, patients are subjected to many test to further improve treatment options for their illness, and it is important that physicians and healthcare staff are able to convey what the process might Intel. Physicians and healthcare staff are constantly in and out of patient’s rooms providing consultations, prescribing and administering medication, and providing assessments on patients that will be added to their chart for physician review. Most patients like to be involved in their treatment; it helps ease anxiety as well as allows the patient to be in control of what is being done to them. Many researches have been conducted on the importance of healthy communication in the healthcare settings. One researcher by the name of Karen Cook wrote an article on the purpose of good communication titled, “Improving Physicians’ Communication Skills.” Cook states, “As studies validate, good communication has a therapeutic effect for patients, even reducing pain, improving blood pressure readings and increasing function. Patients, who understand their doctors are also more likely to acknowledge health problems, understand treatment options, modify their behaviors and comply with medication schedules (Cook, 2015, para. 3).”
In many cases, after experiencing good healthy communication from physicians and their healthcare staff members patients feel that their condition improved. Cook elaborates on how physicians should treat patients as if they are their partner in their treatments stating, “Ensure that physicians treat patients as partners. Patients are the only ones who can determine whether they feel as if they (and their key caregivers) are being treated as true partners in their care. The "listen carefully and explain" questions are a reflection of this perception. In fact, studies show that the average physician in a typical interaction will interrupt a patient within 17 seconds (Cook, 2015, para. 7).”
Although patients experience proper communication in some healthcare establishments, there are just as many who experience poor communication skills from their physician and other healthcare staff members. Patients often feel that their physician does not practice active listening skills when they are attempting to explain what is causing pain or discomfort in their bodies. There have been cases in healthcare establishments and in hospitals that patients feel as though there physician dismissed their input on their symptoms. In an article that targets the impact poor communication affects patients, written by a journalist by the name of Kirsten Weir titled “Improving Patient-Physician Communication.” In the article Weir interviews a marketing specialist in Chicago who just gave birth to her second child whose name is Claudia Brown.