Doctor-patient communication practices: A cross-sectional survey on Indian physicians

Effective communication is a critical and fundamental element of a successful medical practice and exerts a substantial influence on patient contentment, adherence, and disease outcome. This study was planned to identify domains for improvement in doctor-patient communication to enhance good practices in the future.

A cross-sectional study was carried out involving 500 randomly selected samples of clinicians from government or private medical colleges across India. Data collection about current communication practices was carried out using google questionnaire forms and analysed.

Among the practitioners, there were 315 males and 185 females. The average time spent on patients' consultation is 9.8 minutes. Nearly 80% of doctors do not introduce themselves to the patients, while half of the doctors consistently employ the patient's name throughout discussion. The majority (82.8%) of the doctors listen to the patients attentively and showed empathy and positive attitude towards them. The maximum number of the doctors (55%) check that they comprehend what the patient explains about the disease, explain the need of prescribed tests (78%), and inform the result of the examination to the patient (68.8%). Approximately half of the study participants did not discuss the advantages and disadvantages of given treatments, but 78% of them agreed to do so in the future. More than half of clinicians schedule patient interviews to break unpleasant news. The majority of the doctors (60.8%) communicate the future treatment strategy and prognosis to patients.

Overall, a positive attitude was observed; however, a few domains that needed improvements were discussing awareness of the disease, advantages and disadvantages of treatment, and patient satisfaction.