Question: How can the way doctors speak to patients help recovery and medical state?

Lisa Newson answered on 1 Jul 2021:

So what we say, and how we say it can impact what patients do (or don’t do). In health psychology we can look at this from a patients health beliefs and their coping strategies. So for example if someone is at risk for heart disease and the doc want the person to take a preventative medicine for example, the patient might just sit there and take the script, they may or may not cash the prescription and pick up the medicine. When they get it home, do they start taking (and continue) to take that medication? What if that person believed that heart disease runs in the family history (so nothing you can do about it)- or that heart disease isn’t preventable, or that heart disease isn’t a big deal if you get it as loads of people they know have it and live fine. So based on these health beliefs they choose not to take the meds.
in this way the doctor would have don’t well to have explored the patients health beliefs prior to making the prescription, assessing and helping change the beliefs or perhaps not issuing the prescription.
The Language we use with patients can also have an impact, invoking fear for example and being authoritarian is old school and in health psychology we wouldn’t advocate this, but a collaborate decision making process and language to work with the patient.

does this answer ok?