Applications of Health Psychology

 Improving doctor–patient communication

Health psychologists attempt to aid the process of communication between physicians and patients during medical consultations. There are many problems in this process, with patients showing a considerable lack of understanding of many medical terms, particularly anatomical terms (e.g., intestines). One main area of research on this topic involves "doctor-centered" or "patient-centered" consultations.

Improving adherence to medical advice

Getting people to follow medical advice and adhere to their treatment regimens is a difficult task for health psychologists. People often forget to take their pills or consciously opt not to take their prescribed medications because of side effects. Failing to take prescribed medication is costly and wastes millions of usable medicines that could otherwise help other people. Estimated adherence rates are difficult to measure (see below); there is, however, evidence that adherence could be improved by tailoring treatment programs to individuals' daily lives.

Ways of measuring adherence

Health psychologists have identified a number of ways of measuring patients' adherence to medical regimens:

• Counting the number of pills in the medicine bottle—although this has problems with privacy and/or could be deemed patronizing or showing lack of trust in patients
• Using self-reports—although patients may fail to return the self-report or lie about their adherence
• Asking a doctor or health worker—although this presents problems on doctor–patient confidentiality
• Using "Trackcap" bottles, which track the number of times the bottle is opened; however, this either raises problems of informed consent or, if informed consent is obtained, influence through demand characteristics.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_psychology