An article by Niels Lynøe et al. examines the patient-staff relationship following an incident where a 39-year old cancer patient published information on her treatment and effects. The dissatisfied patient shared her experience of asking for a new, expensive treatment option. However, she turned into patient blogging when the healthcare staff did not attain her requests. The goal of this vignette-based study is to determine whether the collective patient’s critical blogging might influence the way healthcare professionals treat and interact with their patients.
In the study, there were two responses by the healthcare staff to the e-patients’ criticism:
- Value-influenced: The healthcare staff put extra effort into their encounters with patients and offer an alternative/expensive medical treatment.
- Value-neutral: The healthcare staff maintain the established routines and follow them as usual.
The majority of the e-patient participants decreased their trust in the healthcare system if the healthcare team followed the value-influenced. In this case, the e-patients deemed the clinical judgment of the healthcare staff to be less reliable. The participants did not, however, alter their perceptions when the healthcare staff followed the value-neutral.
The above article pinpoints that the healthcare staff is influenced by e-patients blogging but does not assess the magnitude of the effect.
Source: Lynøe, N., Nattochdag, S., Lindskog, M., & Juth, N. (2016). Heed or disregard a cancer patient’s critical blogging? An experimental study of two different framing strategies. BMC Medical Ethics, 17(1). doi:10.1186/s12910-016-0115-3
What was the central issue faced by the 39-year-old cancer patient?