What makes people want to go back to the same doctor?

The doctor-patient relationship is vital to modern-day healthcare. Patients must be able to trust their physicians fully to be able to confide openly to them. Through full disclosure, doctors will be able to sufficiently and thoroughly address the patient’s needs and concerns.

The lack of a good patient-doctor relationship, on the other hand, can hinder the doctor’s capability to fully diagnose the patient’s health. This may lead to a compromise in the quality of care and treatment plan the doctor provides.

This are two of the main reasons people prefer going back to the same doctor rather than consulting to a new one. Having a primary doctor is convenient because they have a unique knowledge of your health history and can often consult with you about what type of specialist you may need to go to. Since that relationship is developed over time, good quality service and care is guaranteed.

Moreover, seeing the same doctor each time you need medical care might reduce your risk of death, research suggests.

According to The Guardian, previous studies have revealed that so-called continuity of care is linked to a number of benefits, including patients following medical advice more closely, better uptake of vaccines and other preventive measures, and fewer emergency hospital admissions.

The study suggests that visiting the same physician over time could save your life. The review by researchers at St. Leonard’s Practice in Exeter and the University of Exeter Medical School looks at the relationship between death rates and “continuity of care,” which these researchers defined as the repeated contact between a person and his or her doctor.

The researchers took a look at 22 studies from 9 countries, each with different health systems. Out of these, 18 studies found that regular contact with the same doctor resulted in fewer deaths over the study period. These took place in a total of nine different countries, ranging from the US to England, South Korea and Israel.

This means that seeing the same doctor have proven benefits apart from improved patient satisfaction, the development of improved patient trust in family physicians, and lowered health system costs.

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