Future directions in research on consumer–provider communication and adherence to cancer prevention and treatment

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Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine emerging issues in consumer–provider communication and patient adherence to cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and coping with survivorship. Many factors that have been shown to affect adherence can be supported or hindered by provider–patient communication, including the provider–patient relationship, patients’ beliefs, social and cultural norms, family and social support, mood, and behavioral management. Six research questions are posed, and substantive and methodological recommendations are offered for empirical research on the measurement and achievement of patient adherence.

Section snippets

Background

Communication, typically thought of as the unimpeded flow of information and meaning between individuals, appears to be essential to health care outcomes [1]. Effective provider–patient communication can improve cancer care for several reasons, not the least of which is that communication likely enhances patient adherence to health care recommendations, and patient adherence itself is a critical mediating factor between health recommendations and their outcomes. A health professional’s clear

Research on adherence and communication

In cancer, as in all diseases, health professional–patient communication can affect patient adherence in complex and multifaceted ways. Effective communication is not easily accomplished in any medical care delivery setting, but the advanced, and sometimes frightening, technological interventions of cancer treatment can make this goal particularly difficult to achieve [12]. Despite a fairly substantial body of research on adherence, empirical work in the realm of cancer has not been systematic,

Conclusion

Taking all possible factors into account, what is the most succinct and valid prediction model of patient adherence? Despite several decades of research on patient adherence to treatment, this question has not been answered. There remain serious gaps in the research, not the least of which involve: (1) a concise explanation of why patients do or do not adhere; (2) how predictions and explanations of adherence can be altered by various conditions of disease, measurement, and regimen; (3) what

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