HEALTHAgreement may boost disease managementPatient-physician collaboration may be key to controlling chronic medical conditions, but achieving it is often a challenge.By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. Dec. 8, 2003. When patients and physicians concur on diabetes treatment goals and how to achieve them, self-management of the disease is improved, according to a study in the November Journal of General Internal Medicine. The problem: Such harmony is elusive. "Doctors are used to telling patients what they should do, often without giving very much information or being aware of the obstacles patients may face," said Michele Heisler, MD, the study's lead author and a lecturer in the Dept. of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor. But patient factors are key pieces of the puzzle. "Patient goals are fundamental to primary care, although it's not a standard part of primary care to illicit what those goals are," Dr. Heisler said. "We have a higher percentage of our patients with long-term chronic diseases that require multiple complex behaviors. We're going to have to be better behavioral psychologists." To explore issues related to this aspect of physician-patient communication, Dr. Heisler and others at the University and the Ann Arbor-based Veterans Affairs Center for Practice Management and Outcomes Research sent surveys to more than 100 diabetic patients and their primary care physicians. The results indicated that patient and physician agreement -- though somewhat rare -- was associated with improved condition management. Patients wanted to get off medications and avoid insulin. Physicians wanted their patients to lower their cholesterol and blood pressure levels. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2003 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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