부산대학교 도서관

In virtually every health care setting, improving patient-physician communication remains an important issue, and a question prompt list (QPL) as a simple, individualized, and inexpensive tool can be used to expedite active patient participation and to render the patient-physician communication more focused for more effective medical consultation. A QPL often consists of a structured list of questions which patients may wish to ask their physicians about illness and treatment. With its theoretical basis built on theories about patient empowerment and health literacy, QPL has increasingly reported in the literature positive effects on improving both patients' and physicians' communication behaviors as it helps encourage patients to ask more questions regarding their health care, reduce anxiety about consultation, and enhance greater health information recall. QPL has further been shown to improve the quantity of information provided by physicians during consultation, thereby boosting patients' satisfaction with consultation. Key components of successful implementation of QPL in the future in Taiwan should include developing sufficient and accessible evidence-based QPLs, training health professionals, increasing patients' awareness, and making necessary adjustments to render clinical procedures more flexible.