E-Health Informed Foreign Patient and Physician Communication: The Perspective of Informed Consent

摘要

The rapidly growth of mobility population of exchange students, foreign workers, and tourists raises the communication challenge of foreign patient-physician communication in local hospitals (clinics). Language is not the only one skill during a medical visit, health literacy is another important skill used to understand the medical information delivered by doctors. Skills in understanding and applying information about health issues are critical to the process of patient-physician communication and may have substantial impact on health behaviors and health outcomes. In recent years, the practice of foreigners using mobile apps to search map for location, access transportation information, and lookup translation, have increased steadily. However, the current mobile apps can't support foreigners for their sudden needs of hospital visits. Take into consideration of language barrier and low health literacy issue, an Internet health information-based patient-centered mobile system, is suggested to mediate the informed consent process of patient-physician communication. Thus, this research aims to enhance foreign visitors' capabilities in communication during exchange information with local foreign doctors by developing an effective patient-physician communication mobile system. Based on four case studies of patients' hospital visit experiences in Europe and Asia and their perception toward using the media-mediated communication. We concluded that 1) e-health informed foreign patients' language skill and health literacy were improved in compare with non-internet-informed patients group; 2) e-health informed patients' states of anxiety were reduced; 3) their satisfaction of medical visit were improved; and 4) the process of informed consent was standardized into six parts (Symptom description, Disease judgment, Disease diagnosis, Examination, Treatment, and Healthcare education) for general foreign patient communications.