200: THE EFFECT OF PATIENT- PHYSICIAN RELATIONSHIP ON HEALTH INFORMATION SEEKING BEHAVIOR OF DIABETIC PATIENTS

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The base of any relation between patients and physician is patients' needs for medical services. By providing the most needed medical services, the control of patients' diseases could be improved. The goal of the current study is to investigate the effect of patient-doctor relation on the health information seeking behavior of the patients. METHODS: This is an applied cross sectional study. 362 diabetic patients were selected using non-percentage stratified random sampling for this study. The data gathering tool was the Lango questionnaire. The gathered data were analyzed using descriptive (frequency distribution, average, standard deviation) and analytical (Person correlation, one way ANOVA, independent t-test) statistics with the help of SPSS 20 software. RESULTS: According to the patients, having health related information increases their self-management and their satisfaction regarding treatment process. Independent t-test showed that there is a significant difference between the health information seeking behavior of patients that rely on their doctor and patients that don't rely on their doctor in the dimension of receiving information (P=0.003). Also there is a statistically significant relation between consulting the doctor and three of the four dimensions of health information seeking behavior and between satisfaction regarding the transfer of medical information with the dimension of information sources of health information seeking behavior of diabetic patients (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: The patients and physicians relations effect on patients' health information seeking behavior. Identifying the patients' needs through investigating their health information seeking behavior and presenting the results to frontline medical practitioners can improve the satisfaction of the services provided and can improve the relation between patients and doctors.