Patient-Provider Communication in Healthcare

How patients and clinicians exchange information shapes nearly every consequential moment in medicine, from a diagnosis delivered in an exam room to a treatment decision that will define months of a person's life. Researchers in this area study how physicians communicate risk and uncertainty, how patients process numerical information about their odds and options, and how structural tools like decision aids can support more genuine participation in care. A persistent challenge is that trust, health literacy, and numeracy vary enormously across patients, meaning that even well-designed communication can land very differently depending on who is in the room. Active work is pushing toward understanding how to calibrate information for those with lower numeracy skills, and how to measure whether shared decision-making actually improves outcomes beyond patient satisfaction scores.

Works

49,035

Total citations

922,291

Keywords

Patient-Centered CarePhysician CommunicationHealth Decision AidsMedical ConsultationsRisk ComprehensionTrust in Healthcare