The importance of the Patient-Provider Relationship

This post is written by Alicia Philippou.

Alicia serves as a Health Navigator at Smart Chicago Collaborative.

While the threat of Ebola has terrified the American public and caused health care facilities and airports all across the country to change their practices, another virulent, contagious, and preventable disease has already firmly planted itself on our shores. Measles is making one heck of a comeback and the blame, at least partially, is being aimed at parents of unvaccinated children by doctors and the media.

As someone working in the field of public health this topic intrigues me both scientifically and logistically, and has brought to mind a few questions. What is it  that has made these parents decide not to vaccinate their children? How were they informed about the risks and benefits of vaccination? Was there a miscommunication, a lack of trust, or a lack of understanding of medical facts? And, how can doctors and public health officials respect parents' wishes and rights while keeping the community as a whole safe?

While these questions are much too complicated for me to answer myself, as a Health Navigator for Smart Health Chicago serving at the General Medicine Clinic at Fantus Health Center, I have seen how much trust and respect can be built between both patients and providers by opening up avenues of communication. At Fantus, I educate patients about how they can access their healthcare providers more easily. A large portion of this consists of enrolling patients in a patient portal; a website that gives patients access to their medical information and allows them to send messages, medication renewal, and appointment requests to their doctors. It is always wonderful to see how many patients, whether they know a thing about computers or not, get excited about this program and the new-found access to their doctors it affords them.

Now, while I am not proposing that a functioning patient portal is the answer to the current measles outbreak, I have noticed there is a lot of distrust of mainstream medicine being vocalized by the'anti-vax" community. This could be due to any number of reasons with one possible contributor being strain from past patient-provider relationships. Whatever the primary cause, I think that anything that doctors, and other healthcare providers, can do to make patients feel more comfortable, in-control, and knowledgeable about their healthcare is incredibly valuable. It can only strengthen the trust and bond between provider and patient which can only lead to better health outcomes both for the patient and society as a whole. I hope that through my service I am in some small way assisting to strengthen the patient-provider relationship by facilitating easier communication between the two groups.