The article, "The Role of Patient Satisfaction in Online Health Information Seeking," reports the results of a study conducted in Fall 2007, which indicate that dissatisfied patients are significantly more likely to turn to and trust sources of health information other than their physician, a fact that has considerable implications for adherence to treatment.
"Many of the cancer patients and survivors who took the survey on which the study is based e-mailed me to thank me for giving them an opportunity to share their experience with their physicians as well as to talk about health information resources they found useful," Tustin (pictured with husband and dogs) said. "They said they were glad I was doing this study. I've also on several occasions had people, in particular, senior citizens, tell me how glad they are to know I'm specializing in health communication. It's especially moving to know that the work we do can make a difference, and that people are aware of it."
Tustin's research was inspired by time she spent with a neighbor's young daughter while living near USC. The child's operation was botched at the hospital, which caused her mother to do more research online following the bad experience.
"That was an incentive to focus on physician trust and patient satisfaction," Tustin said. "That was the genesis of the project. On the whole, people were satisfied with care they received, but there was a likelihood for dissatisfied patients to rely on the Internet more than satisfied patients."
The paper began as a project undertaken for a Comm 620 course on digital health taught by communication professor Margaret McLaughlin. It was subsequently presented at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in San Diego in November, 2008. Before submitting it to the Journal of Health Communication, Nupur used communication professor Randy Lake’s summer course on academic publishing in 2008 to refine the paper. The paper was accepted after one revision in February, 2009.
Abstract:
Studies of online health information seeking are beginning to address a basic question: why do people turn to the Internet? This study draws upon the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) and Media System Dependency (MSD) perspectives to examine in this process the role played by satisfaction with care. The sample comprised 178 cancer listserv users, of whom 35% chose the Internet as their preferred source of health information compared with 19% who named their oncologist. Dissatisfied patients were significantly more likely to rate the Internet as a better source of information than the provider (p = .001). The level of empathy shown by the provider and the quality of time spent with the patient had a significant negative association with choosing the Internet as a preferred source of information, and a significant positive association with choosing the oncologist as an information source. The results from this study emphasize the significance of the patient-provider interaction. Dissatisfied patients' tendency to seek and trust information sources other than their physician also may have implications for compliance with treatment.
The Role of Patient Satisfaction in Online Health Information Seeking
