Patient-physician relationship in the management of asthma: Multicentric approach in Latin America

Abstract

Objective: To investigate and compare how Latin American physicians rate themselves on the use of communication strategies in the management of asthma patients, and to explore their personal experience and opinions on asthma treatment. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of physicians attending international medical conferences in Latin America was conducted. Participants rated themselves on frequency of use of 24 communication strategies using a 5-point Likert scale. For statistical analysis, self-rating responses were divided into two classes: very likely to (always or often on a Likert scale) and not very likely to (sometimes, seldom or never on a Likert scale). Participants also answered 4 multiple choice questions about management of asthma patients. Overall responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Chi-square. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate self-ratings by country, gender, practice area (GP or specialist) and age. Results: A total of 304 physicians from Ecuador, Argentina and Peru responded. Overall, the majority of respondents rated themselves very likely to use 21 of the 24 communication strategies. Some significant differences were observed in self-ratings among physicians from different countries, between males and females, between GPs and specialists and between younger and older physicians. Responses to the multiple choice questions showed that 79.6% of the respondents believed that most or almost all patients can achieve asthma control. Conclusions: A high percentage of the Latin American physicians surveyed rated themselves very likely to use good communication strategies when managing asthma patients and felt that asthma control can be achieved in most or almost all patients.

Keywords:

• Asthma
• communication
• patient-physician relationship
• statistics

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the guidance and knowledge imparted by the MECOR Program; specially to Sonia Buist, MD and Ana Menezes, MD. We are very appreciative to Teresa To, Director of GREAT (Respiratory Global Research And Training) Network, and Ilka Santoro, MD; for support in designing the study and data analysis. Also, we acknowledge to Mary Chaiken for the English's grammar revision of manuscript. Finally, we are also very grateful for all the support provided by Erick Calero, José Martín, and Michell Torres, as well as to all members of the RespiraLab team.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.