Where Do Oncology Patients Seek and Share Health Information? Survey Study

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Patients' Positions on the Degree of Trust to be Placed in Physicians

Patient-physician relationship is ideally based on mutual trust. Trust usually takes times to build but can quite instantaneously be destroyed as a result of a single action or a single misperception. This study examined the way patients conceptualize the relationship between trust in a physician and perceived competency, honesty and openness, and personal involvement in care. One hundred sixty-seven patients aged 18-85 years were presented with a set of 27 three-item realistic vignettes that described situations in which participants could find themselves if hospitalized because of illness or accident. These scenarios resulted from the complete crossing of the three factors mentioned above. Participants were asked to assess the level of trust they would feel in each case. Through cluster analysis, three positions were found. For a minority of participants, trust was either unconditionally high (4%) or always quite low (8%). For a majority (75%), however, trust depended interactively on competency and honesty, on the one hand, and involvement, on the other hand; that is, the impact of competency and honesty on trust always depended on the level of involvement in care. In particular, when involvement had a low level, trust was always quite low, irrespective of the levels of both other factors. These findings are fully consistent with the view that, for a majority of patients, trust is inherently brittle: A breach in any one of participants' expectations regarding physicians' professionalism is enough to result in a more than proportional reduction in trust level.

Utility of ChatGPT in Clinical Practice

ChatGPT is receiving increasing attention and has a variety of application scenarios in clinical practice. In clinical decision support, ChatGPT has been used to generate accurate differential diagnosis lists, support clinical decision-making, optimize clinical decision support, and provide insights for cancer screening decisions. In addition, ChatGPT has been used for intelligent question-answering to provide reliable information about diseases and medical queries. In terms of medical documentation, ChatGPT has proven effective in generating patient clinical letters, radiology reports, medical notes, and discharge summaries, improving efficiency and accuracy for health care providers. Future research directions include real-time monitoring and predictive analytics, precision medicine and personalized treatment, the role of ChatGPT in telemedicine and remote health care, and integration with existing health care systems. Overall, ChatGPT is a valuable tool that complements the expertise of health care providers and improves clinical decision-making and patient care. However, ChatGPT is a double-edged sword. We need to carefully consider and study the benefits and potential dangers of ChatGPT. In this viewpoint, we discuss recent advances in ChatGPT research in clinical practice and suggest possible risks and challenges of using ChatGPT in clinical practice. It will help guide and support future artificial intelligence research similar to ChatGPT in health.

Therapeutic Relational Connection in Telehealth: Concept Analysis

BACKGROUND

Therapeutic relational connection (TRC) in telehealth is a new concept that refers to the intentional use of relationship connection between health care providers and their patients as both parties work toward a therapeutic aim. It has been demonstrated that TRC positively affects patient-centered outcomes including adherence, self-management, and satisfaction with care. What is not known are best practices for establishing TRC during telehealth visits. The rapid emergence of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic has identified a number of challenges. These challenges include lack of human contact, distance creating mistrust, the inability to rely on nonverbal communication, and a sense of depersonalization. Training for health care providers in these interpersonal communication skills needed to establish TRC during telehealth visits is needed.

OBJECTIVE

This paper aims to explore the evolutionary concept of TRC in telehealth. The purpose of this paper is to provide a concept analysis of TRC during telehealth interactions between providers and patients through a comprehensive review of the existing published literature.

METHODS

Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis method was used to guide this study. PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, and CINAHL were used to search for relevant publications. An integrative review strategy aided by Rayyan software was used to identify a final sample of 13 papers for analysis.

RESULTS

The proposed definition of TRC in telehealth is the experience of a mutually responsive patient-provider relationship that is built on mutual respect and understanding and informed by cultural humility, presence, empathy, and the ability to effectively evaluate patient concerns to work toward a therapeutic aim. The key attributes of TRC in telehealth are the provider's ability to evaluate patient concerns, interpersonal communication, cultural humility, mutual trust and respect, presence, empathy, and building relationships. Clinical presence, proper environment, knowledge about the use of technology (both patient and provider), use of verbal and nonverbal communication, and knowledge about community and culture are important antecedents of TRC. Consequences of TRC include improved communication resulting in mutual respect and caring, adherence to follow-up recommendations, increased coping, collaborative decision-making, and satisfaction with care.

CONCLUSIONS

Telehealth visits necessitate alternative approaches to establishing TRC as compared to in-person clinic visits. With the rapid expansion of telehealth platforms and a heightened acceptance of the technology, there is a need to integrate knowledge and provide a clear conceptualization of TRC in telehealth as TRC has been demonstrated to result in positive patient-centered outcomes. Identifying the attributes and antecedents of TRC in telehealth allows us the opportunity to develop guidelines and educational interventions aimed at training health care providers in the skills needed to establish TRC during telehealth visits.

Validity and Reliability of the Japanese Version of the 10-Item Perceived Efficacy in Patient-Physician Interactions (PEPPI-10) Scale in Breast Cancer Outpatients

The 10-item Perceived Efficacy in Patient-Physician Interactions (PEPPI-10) questionnaire was used as an indirect measure of the patients' perception of the strength of their therapeutic connection with their physician. The English version of the PEPPI-10 could serve as a valuable research tool for analyzing the relationship between patient and physician. The incidence of breast cancer is amongst the highest in Japan, and Patient Reported Outcome is often used as an outcome measure for breast cancer. It is particularly important to establish a strong patient-physician interaction for patients with breast cancer, since these patients require long-term treatment. We designed the present study to assess the reliability and validity of the Japanese version of the PEPPI-10 in female Japanese breast cancer outpatients. A cross-sectional study was performed at the Saitama Cancer Center, Japan. From August 2014 to August 2015, the Japanese versions of the PEPPI-10 that measure patient-perceived self-efficacy and the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) that measure illness perception were used for 92 breast cancer patients who received outpatient chemotherapy (mean age: 52.9 years, Cancer Stage I or Stage II : 82.6%, receiving adjuvant chemotherapy: 69.6%). We found that the Japanese version of the PEPPI-10 scale had a high coefficient of internal consistency (Cronbach's α coefficient, 0.83) for reliability, and concurrent validity analysis indicated that the utility of PEPPI-10 was moderately correlated with that of the BIPQ. In conclusion, the Japanese version of the PEPPI-10 is a useful tool that can empower breast cancer outpatients during the course of their treatment.

Medicine, morality and health care social media

Social media includes many different forms of technology including online forums, blogs, microblogs (i.e. Twitter), wikipedias, video blogs, social networks and podcasting. The use of social media has grown exponentially and time spent on social media sites now represents one in five minutes spent online. Concomitant with this online growth, there has been an inverse trajectory in direct face-to-face patient-provider moments, which continue to become scarcer across the spectrum of health care. In contrast to standard forms of engagement and education, social media has advantages to include profound reach, immediate availability, an archived presence and broad accessibility. Our opportunity as health care providers to partner with our patients has never been greater, yet all too often we allow risk averse fears to limit our ability to truly leverage our good content effectively to the online community. This risk averse behavior truly limits our capacity to effectively engage our patients where they are--online.