Strategies For Patient Preference-based Physician-patient Knowledge Transfer

Asymmetry of information in the doctor-patient relationship is one of the most important characteristics in the healthcare market. How much information to release to patients, and how much to withhold, are questions of never ending speculation in medicine industry. A lot of researches reveal that giving patients specific information will make them better adjustment and reduce pain perception. This paper researches patients' preference on medical knowledge transferring, which will instruct physicians to transfer suitable information to patients reducing the knowledge gap between doctors and patients.The paper starts with review of abundant literature. It summarizes the research on doctor-patient communication, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and its modification and application. The paper also concludes the research on knowledge transferring between individuals, the patients' medical care knowledge needs and patients' preference. Through intensive academic analysis a model of doctor-patient knowledge transferring tactics based on patients' preference is developped mainly from the planned behavior theory.In demonstration study, we choose two integrative hospitals in Rank III Grade I as the investigation objects and collect large amount of credible data. By using statistics software SPSS 13.0, we examine the validity of the model and modify the structural components. The empirical results supported most of our hypothesis .The main conclusions are shown as follows: (1) behavioral attitude tendency, perceived behavior control, subjective norms are factors that influence on doctor-patient knowledge transferring; (2) information preference, self-control and outcome evaluation are main factors that influence on patients' intention of accepting knowledge about treatment&healing; reference group, outcome evaluation and motivation to comply are main factors that influence on patients' intention of accepting other knowldege; self-control, outcome evaluation and decision preference are main factors that influence on patients' intention of accepting disease knowledge;(3) behavioral attitude tendency, perceived behavior control, subjective norms explain not well on knowledge expressing approaches;(4) patients with different characteristics perceive differently on all variables. These conclusions provide some constructions on healthcare knowledge transferring from physicians to patients.Furthermore, the paper uses clustering approach to identify the characteristic oftarget customers and points out the knowledge transfer tactics based on patients' preference. Finally, the paper proposes the research prospect.