This research example highlights that while counselling is a useful generic term, actual counselling sessions vary in pharmacy practice. Our review does
not allow NVP-BKM120 mw us to say whether the four different approaches to pharmacist counselling that Pilnick observed in cancer care also apply to diabetes care, or whether different counselling approaches are associated with different results in terms of patient satisfaction, treatment or diabetic outcomes. Yet diabetic patients’ behaviour, decisions regarding compliance and long-term prospects might depend not only on what pharmacists say and how, but also on what patients understand and expect from pharmacists. The current body of evidence from RCTs on pharmacist involvement in diabetes care does not allow us to do any more than speculate about these important matters. Nevertheless, it is possible to conduct qualitative research in the context of RCTs, and the qualitative findings can assist in explaining the quantitative results.[43,44] Furthermore, communication content and strategies
can be studied quantitatively. Indeed, researchers have consistently linked physician communication to patient outcomes using quantitative analysis.[45–49] Greenfield et al.[46] have shown, for example, by analysing audio-tapes of visits to physicians that diabetic patients who were taught communication skills were twice as effective as controls in soliciting information from doctors (p. 456). Meanwhile, research selleckchem that has used both quantitative and qualitative analysis has found that physicians who espouse the principles of patient-centred care do not consistently apply these principles
Amobarbital in their own practice.[50] Just because a health professional has been trained to intervene in a particular way does not mean that they do so consistently. Recipients, moreover, influence how an interaction unfolds. Patients may take up, resist or transform communication processes and outcomes on a turn-by-turn basis. In addition, organizational structures and processes of socialization may constrain or condition providers and patients alike to interact in particular ways. For example, while physicians appear to explicitly limit the scope and length of patients’ verbal responses to physicians’ diagnoses, communication research has shown that physicians do so for practical reasons. Moreover, such research has found that patients expect physicians to move directly to treatment recommendations following the announcement of a diagnosis.[51] Patients do respond verbally to diagnoses, typically when physicians deliver unwanted or uncertain treatment recommendations. Earlier research on patients’ views of community pharmacists suggests, for example, that while patients appreciate pharmacists as ‘helpful’ they do not necessarily regard pharmacists as ‘advice-givers’.[52] More recently, Holland et al.