For some years now research has pointed clearly to the strong link between effective doctor-patient communication and patient well-being. Good communication skills impact positively on many areas of patient care: from how well the patient understands their medical condition to how they feel about it and their doctor, which in turn increases how likely the patient is to adhere to a prescribed treatment and the effectiveness of said treatment. Effective communication has been similarly linked to the adoption of preventative behaviours and the ability to self-manage chronic medical conditions, both of which improve the patient’s quality of life on the long-term.<\/p>\n
It is also good news for doctors, who report greater job satisfaction and less work-related stress when communication is optimised. Not to mention fewer formal complaints and malpractice suits.<\/p>\n
These findings support the current shift from the paternalistic \u201cdoctor knows best\u201d approach to a model of shared decision-making and patient-centred communication \u2013 a principle that is fully applicable to all written material intended for reading by the patient, including medical translations.<\/p>\n
Indeed, it is important that it be applied to patient-facing documents when you consider this research into patient memory for medical information, which found that \u201cwritten information is better remembered [than information communicated orally] and leads to better treatment adherence\u201d. The complexity of the information, or a patient’s state of anxiety, means that between 40-80% of information conveyed in the consultation room is immediately forgotten, this study reports. Information presented in written form, however, gives much better retention rates.<\/p>\n
Informed consent forms, patient information leaflets and health fact sheets and the like should therefore be seen as means of consolidating the doctor-patient relationship and not just as legal formalities.<\/p>\n
The same goes for their translations: it is crucial that other language versions of these documents engage with the patient and support doctor-patient communication in the same way as the original. This is what you get when you used a specialised translation agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For some years now research has pointed clearly to the strong link between effective doctor-patient communication and patient well-being. Good communication skills impact positively on many areas of patient care: from how well the patient understands their medical condition to how they feel about it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medical-translations"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n