Mulford Health Science Library : Resources on Communicating with Patients

Selected Journal Articles

Journal Articles from MEDLINE via PubMed

Selected Web Resources

Communicating with Patients: A Quick Reference Guide for Clinicians
This guide provides practical strategies on how to communicate with patients effectively.

Breaking Bad News
Six step protocol for breaking bad news from Ethics in Medicine—part of the Bioethics Education Project from the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Literacy Program
The web page presented by the American Medical Association contains toolkits and resources on issues related to health literacy and patient safety.

The Patient Care Partnership: Understanding Expectations, Rights and Responsibility
Written in plain language, the online brochure informs patients about what they should expect during their hospital stay with regard to their rights and responsibilities.

Improving Doctor/Caregiver Communications
This brochure from the National Family Caregivers Association contains tips for doctors from family caregivers as well as tips for family caregivers from doctors.

Patient-Physician Communication: Why and How
An article from the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association briefly reviews the why and how of effective patient-physician communication. It also provides guidance on how to achieve effective communication in the patient-physician relationship. 

Plain Language: A Promising Strategy for Clearly Communicating Health Information and Improving Health Literacy
The document from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides a brief summary of topics on plain language and how plain language affects adults' understanding of health information.

What Do We Really Know About Patient Satisfaction?
The online article by C. Carolyn Thiedke, MD, reviews the literature on patient satisfaction most relevant to family physicians. It summaries a few practical take-away lessons for physicians in patient encounters.