Health Communication- Personal

In my experience with doctors, I've come to realize that some are good at communicating what is important and others are not. I have dealt a lot with a neurologist because I have migraines and I always have to ask a lot of questions when I have appointments. A typical appointment begins with them taking my height, weight and the circumference of my head. Then I wait for the doctor in one of the rooms that I am so used to. They have a specific list of the questions that they need to know from me, but when they are finished diagnosing me, I have questions about my own health as well. They sometimes tend to forget that I would like to know what is wrong with my head and if it will ever be okay again. My doctor asks me questions about the number of headaches that I've had since my last appointment and to rate the severity of them.

I've also had an EEG and a sleep study performed on me, and both of those events required a lot of communication between the doctors office and my mother. Whether it be numerous phone calls to get the right location of where the appointment is taking place or when the appointment is, my mom would be very frustrated with my doctors office. Their way of communicating was not always the best but when I would have an appointment, the doctors would help to get rid of my migraines. The severity of the migraines has gone down but I still continue to have appointments to regulate my medication and to see if anything has changed. The fact that the doctors office still checks up on their patients is very important and shows that they actually want to help people to get better.

Health Communication- Application

In the movie And the Band Played On, health communication is a very important part of the movie. The researchers in the movie are trying their hardest to discover what this new virus is that is killing so many people very quickly. They have to track friends, family and the sexual relationships of the patients they are dealing with in order to rule every possible scenario out. The majority of the people infected are gay men, so that is a start for the researchers to discover that the virus could be spreading between homosexual relationships. The research that is being done to help the cause eventually leads to homosexual bath houses as a potential risk to catching this new disease. The gay community does not want to shut these bath houses down because they feel like they are being discriminated against. The doctors discover with the help of another researcher from the Center for Disease Control who has been working on feline leukemia, that the new outbreak is AIDS.

The theory of planned behavior model can be seen in use in this movie because of the three factors that must determine a persons intention. The pros and cons have been weighed by the people performing the research of this new outbreak and they feel that their intention to help the population is greater than protecting the feelings of some people. The subjective norm is shown through the social pressure from the gay community to discover what is killing so many people so quickly. It is also shown through the friends and family of the people that have been diagnosed with this disease or that have already died from it. And the perceived behavioral control is shown through the confidence of the doctors that they can discover what this outbreak is and that they can contain it.

Health Communication- Definitional

Communication in health happens on many different levels, individual, group or mass-media. This type of communication is defined as a resource that allows health messages (prevention, risk, awareness, etc.) to be used in the education and avoidance of sickness. There are 3 theories that are used in health communication to explain how messages are conveyed between people in the health field.

The first is the theory of planned behavior. This theory has three components, attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. They all connect to the middle which is behavioral intentions. Behavioral intentions then connects directly to behavior. This theory states that the main determinant of behavior is based on the persons intention to perform said behavior and their intention is determined by three factors. The first is the attitude to the behavior or the pros and cons of that behavior. The second is the subjective norm or the social pressure from significant others and the third is the perceived behavioral control or the perception that the person has about their ability to perform the behavior.

The second theory is the health belief model which is used as a pattern to evaluate individual change. This model of communication suggests that a person's behavior can be predicted by the basis of how weak or vulnerable they consider themselves to be. The person has to weigh the benefits and negative aspects before performing a behavior because of their vulnerability needs. There are four factors that need to take place in order for a behavior change to occur. The first is the person needs to have an incentive to change their behavior. The second is that the person must feel that there is a risk if they continue their current behavior. The third is they must believe their change will have benefits and the fourth is the person must have the confidence to make the change.

The stages of change model is the third theory. It is shaped like a wheel and suggests that people make changes to their behavior at certain stages of their life rather than making one major change. The order the cycle goes in is pre-contemplation, contemplation, readiness to change, action, maintaining changes and relapse. A person can start at any of the stages and choose to move to the next stage at any time. This model is very appealing because of the simplicity of it. It was originally designed for smoking interventions but it has been used for promoting fruit and vegetable consumption, injury prevention and physical activity promotion.

All of these theories can be used to describe health communication and how people communicate in the health profession. These help us to understand how health care providers help people gain better information in order to get the best treatment possible.

The Theory of Planned Behavior Model: