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. 2024 Aug;44(6):617-626.
doi: 10.1177/0272989X241262241. Epub 2024 Aug 2.

Perceived Penalties for Sharing Patient Beliefs with Health Care Providers

Jessecae K Marsh  1 , Onur Asan  2 , Samantha Kleinberg  3
Affiliations

Perceived Penalties for Sharing Patient Beliefs with Health Care Providers

Jessecae K Marsh et al. Med Decis Making. 2024 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Health care interactions may require patients to share with a physician information they believe but is incorrect. While a key piece of physicians' work is educating their patients, people's concerns of being seen as uninformed or incompetent by physicians may lead them to think that sharing incorrect health beliefs comes with a penalty. We tested people's perceptions of patients who share incorrect information and how these perceptions vary by the reasonableness of the belief and its centrality to the patient's disease.

Design: We recruited 399 United States Prolific.co workers (357 retained after exclusions), 200 Prolific.co workers who reported having diabetes (139 after exclusions), and 244 primary care physicians (207 after exclusions). Participants read vignettes describing patients with type 2 diabetes sharing health beliefs that were central or peripheral to the management of diabetes. Beliefs included true and incorrect statements that were reasonable or unreasonable to believe. Participants rated how a doctor would perceive the patient, the patient's ability to manage their disease, and the patient's trust in doctors.

Results: Participants rated patients who shared more unreasonable beliefs more negatively. There was an extra penalty for incorrect statements central to the patient's diabetes management (sample 1). These results replicated for participants with type 2 diabetes (sample 2) and physician participants (sample 3).

Conclusions: Participants believed that patients who share incorrect information with their physicians will be penalized for their honesty. Physicians need to be educated on patients' concerns so they can help patients disclose what may be most important for education.

Highlights: Understanding how people think they will be perceived in a health care setting can help us understand what they may be wary to share with their physicians.People think that patients who share incorrect beliefs will be viewed negatively.Helping patients share incorrect beliefs can improve care.

Keywords: health beliefs; incorrect beliefs; information sharing; patient-provider communication; shared decision-making.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Financial support for this study was provided in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation to JKM (1915210) and SK (1915182). The funding agreement ensured the authors’ independence in designing the study, interpreting the data, writing, and publishing the report.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Ratings for the general online sample. Error bars represent standard error. *Significant comparison between central and peripheral ratings.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Ratings by people with and without diabetes: (A) no-experience group and (B) self-experience group. Error bars represent standard error. n.s., not significant. *Significant comparison between central and peripheral ratings.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Ratings for physician participants. Error bars represent standard error. *Significant comparison between central and peripheral ratings.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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