Precision communication: Physicians' linguistic adaptation to patients' health literacy.

ABSTRACT: Little quantitative research has explored which clinician skills and behaviors facilitate communication. Mutual understanding is especially challenging when patients have limited health literacy (HL). Two strategies hypothesized to improve communication include matching the complexity of language to patients’ HL (“universal tailoring”); or always using simple language (“universal precautions”). Through computational linguistic analysis of 237,126 email exchanges between dyads of 1094 physicians and 4331 English-speaking patients, we assessed matching (concordance/discordance) between physicians’ linguistic complexity and patients’ HL, and classified physicians’ communication strategies. Among low HL patients, discordance was associated with poor understanding (P = 0.046). Physicians

SUBMITTER: Schillinger D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8682984 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature