The relevance of existing health communication models in the email age: An integrative literature review

Abstract

Email communication is being integrated relatively slowly into doctorpatient communication. Patients have expressed enthusiasm for the medium, while doctors are generally more reluctant. As existing health communication models have characteristically assumed the copresence of doctor and patient and primarily reflect medical practitioners perspectives, their suitability in relation to email communication and patients perspectives warrants further investigation. Following a two-step process and using the methodology of the integrative literature review, 29 articles from 20042014 are analysed with the aim of investigating the advantages and disadvantages of the medium of email from the patients perspective. The findings are compared to the health communication models of biomedicine, patient-centeredness, patient education and patient empowerment to investigate these models relevance for doctorpatient email communication. Results show that patients identify numerous advantages with email communication, including improved convenience and access, more detailed informational exchanges, greater reflection opportunities, freedom from the medical gaze and the potential to level out power imbalances, as well as a number of primarily medium-related disadvantages. The findings indicate that email can counteract some of the communicative problems associated with biomedicine and suggest the ongoing rel-evance of aspects of the models of patient empowerment, patient-centeredness and patient education for email communication.