Compliance Gaining and It's Theories

Compliance-Gaining and Its Theories

Have you ever wondered what elements surround patient satisfaction and compliance in hospitals and clinics? What does it take for you to be completely satisfied with care that you are given at medical centers? The article, Increasing Patient Satisfaction and Compliance, examines the impact that patients' perceptions of a physician's humor orientation, credibility, and compliance-gaining strategies have on their satisfaction and compliance. It explores the study of patient behavior in terms of satisfaction and compliance based on variables described in the study. The article also shows and reflects on the positive and negative aspects of relationships between patient and physician communications.

From studies done in the past, it has come to be known that many patients do not follow up with treatments described by their physicians. (Wrench, Booth-Butterfield, 2003) This is a statistic that hasn't changed much over the last twenty years. While it may appear as though these people may only be damaging their own health and well-being, this is not always the truth. People who do not comply with physicians' suggested treatments contribute to higher medical costs and insurance rates for all treatment seekers. One of the largest parts of patient compliance is the interaction between patient and physician. Positive compliance-gaining goals will make interactions more efficient while negative compliance-gaining goals will make interactions inefficient. Overall, positive and negative interactions will greatly affect the compliance-gaining rate (Kellerman, 2004).

All research was done and performed by Dr. Jason S. Wrench and Melanie Booth-Butterfied. Jason Wrench is an Assistant Professor in the College of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University. Previously, he was educated at West Virginia University where he became a doctor of education and at Texas Tech University where he got a masters of arts degree. During this time, he has held teaching positions as a graduate teaching assistant and assistant professor. Also contributing was Melanie Booth-Butterfield. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 1985. She specializes in interpersonal/relational communication, health, anxiety and avoidance, emotion, and humor. Currently she serves as a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.

Many elements surround compliance-gaining and its complicated structure. ("Strategy Choice Models" 2005) "Gaining the compliance of another person is one of the most common communicant goals." It involves trying to get other people to do what you want them to do, or to stop doing something that is disliked. The definition of compliance-gaining states that it occurs when someone goes along with the group without accepting the group's norms or point of view (Encyclopedia of Communication and Information, 2002). The theory of compliance and compliance-gaining goes much deeper. It states that compliance is an exchange for something else supplied by the compliance seeker. Compliance can be an exchange of esteem, approval, money, relief from obligations, and good feelings among many other possibilities. In many ways this can be viewed as an exchange approach. It is basically a model organizing the power and its shifts and balances to others. One of the most important aspects of gaining compliance to be aware of is the fact that it can be either physical or mental. As stated above, compliance can be gained based on sufficient resources such as money, or it can be gained based on esteem/good feelings. Therefore, it is part of the theory, that compliance is not always a quantitative variable, but can be a qualitative variable as well.

As an approach to this study, participants were selected to represent diverse groups. One portion of the students consisted of diverse undergraduates enrolled in communication courses at a large Middle Atlantic public university. This group of students was 56.8% male, 43.2% female and constituted 16.9% of the total sample. The second group was graduate students in an applied master's degree program. The graduate students consisted of 14.6% male, 85.4% female and totaled 18.4% of the total. Also, surveys were taken at the mall by trained interviewers. This group was 54% male, 46% female and accumulated 54.8% of the participants. Finally, 10% of the final portion was obtained from internet postings in America On-line chat rooms (Wrench, Booth-Butterfield, 2003).

All of these participants were questioned in the areas of patient compliance and satisfaction. The questions clearly asked about relationships between physician's humor, credibility, and use of other compliance-gaining strategies. The accumulated answers were used to determine effectiveness of humor orientation, perceived credibility, compliance-gaining, patient satisfaction, and compliance. All of these elements, with the exception of the two compliance related items, were rated based on the "Likert" format scale. This scale allowed survey takers to score the areas on