Health Psychology!!Help needed please

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Hi everyone
I'm hoping someone may be able to help me or at least point me in the right direction.
I've been struggling for a few weeks now with my health psychology assignment - need to write about how psychological theory helps the patient-practitioner relationship!
I'm at my wits end now and really panicking. I've written a big section on communication, and have been looking at Carl Rogers Theory of personality - but I just can't bring it all back to Podiatry.
Help please::craig::craig:

Fa

 

Hi!

A suggestion that may assist is to bring the essay back to pain. Examining humanistic psychology such as Rogerian counselling should enable you to do this. Other areas that may be useful to consider are existential psychology and attachment theory. If the patient feels that the practitioner is empathetic to their suffering podiatric or otherwise, this may be beneficial in the patient practitioner relationship. A knowledge of 'transference' would also possibly assist. Good psychosomatic understanding between individuals builds trust. By using empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard it is easier for the practitioner to understand the patients problems and easier for the patient to freely consent to treatment.

Hope this helps
Best wishes
Colin.

 

Not a great deal specifically on podiatry, but you might find these useful;

A Qualitative Approach to Understanding the Experience of Ulceration and Healing in the Diabetic Foot: Patient and Podiatrist Perspective

Psychosocial Approaches to Podiatry - A Companion for Practice

Cheers,
Bel

 

Hi everyone

Thank you so much for these suggestions- they have at least given me a good idea of where to at least start. Much appreciated.

 

Hello there Orangebelle

I have an MSc in health and organisational psychology, and am now a PhD student in psychology

Without knowing the exact title of your essay, it is difficult to know exactly where to point you. But I did a quick lit search using 'patient-practitioner relationships' and there is oodles of literature out there. I think you will find, there is scant literature that is podiatry specific - my viewpoint is that we are 'thin on the ground' in social sciences as a profession.

I would recommend that you look at the actual concept of patient-practitioner relationship in 2 ways: i.e. how certain psychosocial constructs e.g. health locus of control, self efficacy, resilience, emotional intelligence (this is a current biggy in psychology) personality, demographic background, psychological and physical health influence Patient- clinician relationships.
Secondly, how the relationship influences outcomes e.g outcomes of care, patient perception of health, patient satisfaction, motivation to comply with treatment, appointment attendance etc then relate it back to podiatry. I.e. the research may have been carried out with dentists - and how pod is similar/different, and what may be the impact on that? I personally would avoid restricting yourself to specific aspects e.g. diabetes

I would recommend that you start with Brown's work e.g.Crawford, P., Brown, B., & Bonham, P. (2006) Communication in Clinical Settings,
Adolphs, S., Brown, B., Carter, R., Crawford, P. & Sahota, O. (2004) Applying corpus linguistics in a health care context, Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, (1), 9-28.

Brown's University profile is: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/hls/research/msrc/staff_B_Brown.jsp

I hope this helps you, but I would also check with your lecturer with an essay plan before you take anyone's word off here.

Good luck!