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Prioritising time for communication in healthcare-a normative analysis
Joar Björk1,2,3
1Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences (HMV), Swedish National Centre for Priorities in Health, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden. Joar.bjork@liu.se.
Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy
|May 25, 2026
Summary
Healthcare professionals must prioritize patient communication time. A baseline amount should be given to all, with additional time allocated based on medical needs to ensure equitable and effective care.
Area of Science:
- Healthcare Management
- Medical Ethics
- Health Communication
Background:
- Healthcare systems face supply-demand imbalances necessitating careful resource allocation.
- Existing priority-setting debates often overlook the crucial role of healthcare professional time.
- Communication is a vital, yet often undervalued, component of patient care.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze how healthcare professionals should allocate their time between medical interventions and patient communication.
- To determine which communicative goals should be prioritized in healthcare settings.
- To propose a normative framework for prioritizing communication time.
Main Methods:
- Normative analysis of time allocation in healthcare professional-patient interactions.
- Examination of communication-intensive scenarios, including psychotherapy.
- Application of ethical principles like value coherence and formal equality.
Main Results:
- Communicative goals in healthcare are diverse and cannot be reduced to a single type.
- A baseline amount of communication time should be guaranteed for all patients.
- Additional communication time should be prioritized based on patients' healthcare needs.
Conclusions:
- Effective healthcare requires a significant allocation of time resources to communicative tasks.
- Prioritizing communication time is essential for value coherence and formal equality in patient care.
- Healthcare systems must "take time for communication seriously" to improve patient outcomes and equity.
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