[Communication between physician and patient with chronic heart decompensation may help to reach the therapeutic...

In the management of chronic heart failure there is increasing evidence that effective communication with the patient is an important tool in health care since it permits the achievement of therapeutic goals and the patient's satisfaction in terms of the quality of health assistance received. In fact, the variations in the communication processes relevantly influence the results in some behaviors and attitudes of the patient, such as adherence to the therapeutic prescriptions, understanding and remembering the information received, satisfaction with the medical examination and less worry. The capacity of the patient of co-administering the illness may result in a reduction in the instability due to avoidable concomitant factors, and thus reduce the heart failure morbidity and rehospitalization rate. Building up an effective doctor-patient relationship becomes an important goal to achieve, and the necessary instruments are not only instinctive or the result of experience, but can also be taught and learnt. The aim of this work was to give a contribution, which, in addition to underlining the theoretic aspects of the communicative process by means of numerous examples taken from everyday practice in patient management, is to induce reflection and to propose ways of intervention for the improvement of the therapeutic relationship between the cardiologist and the patient with heart failure.