The Relationships of Perceived Health Professionals’ Communication Traits and Credibility with Perceived Patient Confidentiality

Abstract

Patients at a large medical clinic provided data permitting an analysis of the relationships of perceived communication behaviors (nonverbal immediacy, assertiveness, and responsiveness) and source credibility (competence and caring) with perceptions of the confidentiality of their medical records. Perceptions of physicians, nurses, and support staff were employed. The results indicate that patients’ perceptions of the communication behaviors and credibility of physicians, nurses, and support staff are meaningfully related to patients’ perceptions of confidentiality. The problems of actual confidentiality and perceived confidentiality are discussed in relation to the role of communication as part of the problem and a potential part of the solution.

Notes

Michelle L. Paulsel (MA, Texas State University, 2002) and Jacob L. Cayanus (MA, West Virginia University, 2002) are doctoral candidates, and Virginia P. Richmond (PhD, University of Nebraska, 1977) and James C. McCroskey (DEd, Pennsylvania State University, 1966) are Professors of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.

The cooperating agency provided the researchers with a grant to cover all phases of the data collection process.

Because the cooperating agency's experience indicated that response rates would go down if the questionnaire employed was longer, shorter forms of the instruments were employed in order to include as many different measures as feasible. As a result, some of the measures were found to be less reliable than the longer forms employed in previous research. It is likely that these lower reliabilities resulted in attenuation of correlations obtained in this study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jacob L. Cayanus

Michelle L. Paulsel (MA, Texas State University, 2002) and Jacob L. Cayanus (MA, West Virginia University, 2002) are doctoral candidates, and Virginia P. Richmond (PhD, University of Nebraska, 1977) and James C. McCroskey (DEd, Pennsylvania State University, 1966) are Professors of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.