The Effect of Patient-Physician Relationship on Health Information Seeking Behavior of Diabetic Patients

Information transfer based on real needs of the patients is an important part of the medical services. This study aimed to determine the effect of patient-doctor communication on information seeking behaviors of diabetic patients.
This descriptive-analytic study was done on 362 diabetic patients receiving care in governmental medical centers supervised by Deputy of Health in Isfahan province- Iran who were selected using disproportionate stratified random sampling. The data gathering tool was the Lango questionnaire which was localized for Iranian society by researchers in 2012. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 software.
Ethical Considerations: Patients’ verbal consent was obtained and they were also assured about confidentiality of the information.
Findings: There was a significant difference between information seeking behavior of people who depend on their physicians for gaining information and those who do not in the terms of information retrieval (P=0.003). There was also a significant relationship between consulting the physician and three of the four dimensions of information seeking behavior of diabetic patients and also between transfer of medical information to the patient and dimension of information sources in patient information seeking behavior (P The findings indicates on the effect of patient-doctor communication on information seeking behavior of patients. It is recommended physician provides information to the patient that requires identifying the information needs of patients and considering their health information seeking behavior.