Exploring therapeutic communication in managing chronic non-communicable diseases: a mixed-method study in Ghana

Globally, the burden of chronic non-communicable diseases is increasing rapidly and approximately one in three of all adults suffer from multiple chronic conditions. Therapeutic communication plays a crucial role in achieving curative, preventive, and promotive goals regarding chronic disease management. We examined therapeutic communication between health professionals and patients with chronic non-communicable diseases at the Ho Teaching Hospital.

We adopted a concurrent mixed-methods approach. The quantitative aspect of the study was descriptive while the qualitative was explanatory. The quantitative study was conducted among 250 patients. The qualitative data was collected among eight health professionals. A stratified sampling and simple random sampling methods were used to recruit patients for the quantitative survey while purposive and convenient sampling was used for the qualitative aspect of the study. The quantitative data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire while the qualitative data was collected using an in-depth interview guide. The quantitative data were analyzed using STATA v17 and the qualitative data were analyzed thematically using Atlas ti. The major themes that emerged were, therapeutic communication practices, barriers to therapeutic communication and possible solutions to good therapeutic communication.

We found that 37% patients were 60 years and above with 53.2% being females. It was noted that 36.4% of patients have had tertiary-level education. We found that 59.2% of patients reported having good therapeutic communication with health professionals. We, however, noted that male participants were 92% less likely to practice good therapeutic communication compared with females (aOR = 0.92,95% Cl = 0.46-1.84). Health professionals' activities to ensure good therapeutic practices included their capacity to listen, build rapport with their patients, and clarify information. We found that the major facilitators of good therapeutic communication included trust in the health professionals (90.4%), conducive environment (93.2%), using simple and plain language by health professionals (92.0%) We found that there are myriad of barriers that impede communication process. This included language, health professionals' inability to break terminologies, and the unconscious state of patients.

The study revealed that there was good therapeutic communication between health professionals and patients with CNCDs. Nevertheless, it was also identified that ineffective therapeutic communication between health professionals and their patients due to barriers like language could lead to dissatisfaction with care, misdiagnosis, and noncompliance to treatment regimen. For Ghana as a country to achieve SDG target 3.4 by reducing mortality due to NCDs and improve wellbeing of patients by 2030, it will be imperative on Ghana Health Service to design communication strategy training for health professionals that could help improve therapeutic communication between patients and health professionals.