BACKGROUND:
Health care providers are under significant time constraints in outpatient settings. Our own research and other studies suggest that the amount of time allotted for a patient visit may be inadequate to complete all recommended preventive services. Yet advice from health care providers has been shown to be a powerful predictor of patient compliance with immunization recommendations. Given the limited time available for patient-provider discussion of the risks/benefits of vaccination, what styles of interaction or communication seem most effective in providing that information?

OBJECTIVE:
To describe the most effective patient-provider communication styles for transmitting the risk/benefits of vaccination during routine clinical encounters.

METHOD:
The data is based on audio recordings of adult patient/provider interactions. These interactions were coded based on the Davis code for health care visits. This coding allowed us to identify the percentage of the visits that are devoted to prevention, and specifically to immunizations.

RESULT:
We will present results on how prevention counseling correlates with patient characteristics (age, ethnicity, gender), provider characteristics, and outcomes (receipt of immunization). Qualitative analysis will be used to describe the type of immunization advice.

CONCLUSION:
There are communication styles between providers and patients that prove more conducive to discussing prevention services, including the risk and benefit of vaccination services.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Use of coded information from recordings of patient/provider interactions to characterize communication styles and their effectiveness in providing vaccine risk information.