Patient Provider Communication Today The importance of the research topic (why is this study important?)

This research topic is important for a sundry of reasons. Communication between patients and providers arguably forms the basis of patient self-care. It is also foundational to the ability of patients to follow the instructions of providers regarding their care. This study, then, provides demonstrable data about the ability of healthcare providers to communicate effectively with patients. This topic is important because the efficacy of providers in this aspect of healthcare is the basis for patients’ ability to follow their directives.

This study is also important because it stratifies the nature of provider-patient care into two different realms. The first pertains to general communication. The second pertains to communication specific to a particular chronic disease, diabetes (Piette et al, 2003, p. 624). Categorizing provider communication into these codifications is necessary to determine the effect of such communication on certain long term afflictions and on general understanding of the healthcare process. Each of these areas of communication relates to the ability of patients to effect self-care. These two stratifications enable the researchers to determine what, if any, differences they produce on the self-care of patients. Also, chronic care issues such as diabetes contribute to high healthcare costs, which relates to this study’s importance.

Overall, this research topic is critical to determining ways to improve self-care. It acknowledges that self-care ideally stems from the provider. However, the basis of its implementation is the degree of communication between the provider and the patient.

The researcher’s interest and objectives (e.g. research questions, goals, hypotheses, etc.)

The interests and...

They hoped to ascertain the difference in the effects of general communication and that pertaining to diabetes. However, they wanted to differentiate these factors in regards to a diverse population. They specifically were interested in points of ethnic diversity, that pertaining to education, and that pertaining to type of health care system. The researchers wanted to find out how much differences in the characteristics of patients, providers, and healthcare systems affected the foregoing two types of characteristics. The second research question was predicated on determining the extent to which these variables influenced “diabetes patients’ self-care behaviors” (Piette et al, 2003, p. 624) . The researchers did not have any explicit hypotheses. However, they were fairly convinced that the two different types of communication examined in this study had different repercussions for how patients were able to effect self-care.
• Sampling strategy

The sampling strategy for this study was fairly straightforward. The researchers sought a variety of patients who had diabetes in the state of Virginia. They selected patients from one university based healthcare system, a county health care system, and from three VA health care systems. All of the participants were “identified as part of a study evaluating automated telephone assessments as an adjunct to diabetes management” (Piette et al, 2003, p. 624). The researchers simply used the patients who fit these criteria, although there were multiple points of exclusion. Patients had to be legal adults, speak either English or Spanish, and have a permanent residence. Other points of exclusion included factors such as if patients were afflicted with other fatal conditions, were mentally unstable, were looking to change healthcare systems soon, or…