Doctor communication training helps hypertension care
Training physicians in communication skills improved hypertensive patients’ health literacy, blood pressure control, adherence, and self-efficacy in an Iranian RCT.
Source
Communication skills training for physicians improves health literacy and medical outcomes among patients with hypertension: a randomized controlled trial
Study at a glance
- Design
- RCT — Two-arm RCT; physicians received short experiential communication-skills training
- N
- N=240 · 240 hypertensive patients nested under 35 physicians
- Population
- Hypertensive patients and their primary-care physicians in Mashhad, Iran
- Outcome
- Patient health literacy, adherence, self-efficacy, and blood pressure to 6 months
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Doctor communication training helps hypertension care
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
240 hypertensive patients and 35 physicians were recruited.
This randomized, controlled clinical trial with two parallel arms recruited 35 physicians and 240 hypertensive patients presenting to primary health care centers in Mashhad, Iran, from September 2013 to August 2014.
70% of patients had inadequate or marginal health literacy at baseline.
At baseline, 70% of hypertensive patients showed inadequate and marginal levels of HL (Chew) .
What they did
In Mashhad primary care, 35 physicians and 240 hypertensive patients were studied in a two-arm RCT; intervention physicians received short experiential communication-skills training and patient outcomes were followed to 6 months.
What they found
Physician training was linked to better patient health literacy, medication adherence, self-efficacy, and blood-pressure outcomes versus usual care.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Effects beyond 6 months, generalizability outside Iranian public primary care, and which communication components drove BP change were not isolated.
Key terms
- Health literacy (HL)
- Capacity to obtain, understand, and use health information for decisions.
- Medication adherence
- Extent to which patients take medicines as agreed with clinicians.
- Self-efficacy
- Confidence in managing hypertension-related behaviours.
- Controlled BP
- Blood pressure brought below protocol-defined clinical thresholds.
- Cluster randomization
- Random assignment of health centres as units.
- Hypertension
- Chronically elevated blood pressure needing long-term management.
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The intervention primarily trained:
Common questions
Who was trained?
Primary-care physicians received communication-skills training.
What was the primary clinical endpoint timing?
Proportion with controlled BP at 6 months based on SBP/DBP reduction.
How common was limited HL at baseline?
About 70% of hypertensive patients had inadequate or marginal HL.
How large was the patient sample?
240 hypertensive patients across intervention and control arms.
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