Communication and patient participation influencing patient recall of treatment discussions

CONTEXT: Patient recall of treatment information is a key variable towards chronic disease (CD) management. It is unclear what communication and patient participation characteristics predict recall. OBJECTIVES: To assess what aspects of doctor-patient communication predict patient recall of medication information. To describe lifestyle treatment recall, in CD primary care patients. DESIGN: Observational study within a RCT. SETTING & PARTICIPANTS: Community-based primary care (PC) practices. Family physicians (n=18): practicing >5 years, with a CD patient caseload. Patients (n=159): >40 years old, English speaking, computer literate, off-target hypertension, type II diabetes and/or dyslipidaemia. MAIN VARIABLES: Patient characteristics: age, education, number of CDs. Information characteristics: length of encounter, medication status, medication class. Communication variables: socio-emotional utterances, physician dominance and communication control scores and PACE (ask, check and express) utterances, measured by RIAS. Number of medication themes, dialogue and initiative measured by MEDICODE. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Recall of CD, lifestyle treatment and medication information. RESULTS: Frequency of lifestyle discussions varied by topic. Patients recalled 43% (alcohol), 52% (diet) to 70% (exercise) of discussions. Two and a half of six possible medication themes were broached per medication discussion. Less than one was recalled. Discussing more themes, greater dialogue and patient initiative were significant predictors of improved medication information recall. DISCUSSION: Critical treatment information is infrequently exchanged. Active patient engagement and explicit conversations about medications are associated with improved treatment information recall in off-target CD patients followed in PC. CONCLUSION: Providers cannot take for granted that long-term off-target CD patients recall information. They need to encourage patient participation to improve recall of treatment information.