Communication during patient-provider encounters regarding diabetes self-management.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Diabetes is a common chronic illness with potentially severe complications. The risk of complications is reduced through controlling blood sugar, lipids, and blood pressure. While medical intervention is important, substantial self-management on the part of patients is required to achieve good control. Patients often find self-management difficult, particularly diet and exercise modification. Clinicians face barriers as well, including lack of time, poor reimbursement, and difficulty changing their clinical practice patterns. We hypothesized that a strong focus on readily measured disease indicators competes with patients' agendas relating to symptoms and their day-to-day social context. METHODS: We recorded clinical encounters to study communication about self-management in context. Recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed, primarily using a grounded theory approach. RESULTS: We found that clinicians often focused their communication on quantitative measures such as blood pressure and glycosylated hemoglobin but that patients found it difficult to relate these measures to how they were feeling physically. Patients' social contexts influenced their self-management activities, in particular heavy caregiving responsibilities and work schedules. CONCLUSIONS: Supporting self-management of patients with diabetes requires providers to link clinical measurements to patients' symptoms and likely outcomes. It is difficult for providers to know what support or assistance their patients need without knowledge of patients' social contexts.

Patient-provider communication about diabetes self-care activities.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Controlling diabetes requires sustained self-management on the part of patients. Health care providers can support patients' self-care efforts through communication and problem solving. We conducted this study to determine the frequency with which self-care activities were discussed during office visits for follow-up care of diabetes and how much time was spent on these discussions. METHODS: Audio recordings of 28 patient encounters in five primary care clinics were analyzed. We determined the frequency of self-care discussions and the amount of time devoted to these discussions. RESULTS: Self-care was discussed in all 28 encounters. Median encounter times for each clinic ranged from 19.8 to 37.6 minutes, with self-care discussions taking from 0.1 to 17.2 minutes. Median discussion time devoted to all self-care activities was 5.2 minutes, representing 23.5% of a visit of median length. Blood sugar testing was discussed longer than the other activities. The least time was devoted to eye and foot examinations. Discussions were usually initiated by providers and did not differ in length according to who initiated the discussion. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with diabetes regularly discussed self-care activities during follow-up visits at family medicine clinics. Providers varied in their capacity to incorporate self-care planning into routine medical care for patients with diabetes. Interventions are needed that help improve goal-setting and documentation. Documentation of self-care discussions will be important for meeting Meaningful Use criteria.