Information seeking and social support in online health communities: impact on patients' perceived empathy.
Many healthcare organizations (HCOs) including Kaiser Permanente, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Medical Center, and MD Anderson Cancer Center, provide access to online health communities as part of their overall patient support services. The key objective in establishing and running these online health communities is to offer empathic support to patients. Patients' perceived empathy is considered to be critical in patient recovery, specifically, by enhancing patient's compliance with treatment protocols and the [...]
Author(s): Nambisan, Priya
DOI: 10.1136/amiajnl-2010-000058