Communication problems in health care may arise as a result of health care providers
focusing on diseases and their management, rather than people, their lives and their
health problems. Training health care providers to be more ’patient centred’ could
improve communication in consultations, increase patient’s satisfaction with care and
improve health outcomes.
Overall, there is fairly strong evidence to suggest that training providers in patient
centred care can increase the patient centredness of consultation processes, as
indicated by a range of measures related to clarifying patients’ concerns and beliefs;
communicating about treatment options; or levels of empathy.
There is moderate to high quality evidence that training health care providers in
patient-centred approaches may impact positively on patient satisfaction with care.
The low quality evidence available means that we are very uncertain about the
effects on health care behaviours or health status of interventions to promote
This review found no direct evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to
promote patient-centred care in low and middle-income countries.