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Active interaction and knowledge contribution are vital yet challenging elements of the sustainable development of online health communities (OHCs). To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying these behaviours in doctors' and patients' use of OHCs, this study develops a theoretical model to examine the relationships among cognitive modes, patterns of interaction, perceived usefulness, and contribution behaviour and the impact of user identity on these relationships.

To test the research hypotheses, structural equation modelling and multiple-group analysis were used to analyse survey data from 207 doctors and 213 patients.

The results indicate that dual processes and perceived usefulness are the key cognitive antecedents of interaction and knowledge contribution, respectively. However, the correlation of the rational mode and instrumental interaction is significantly stronger in the doctors' group than in the patients' group, while a stronger correlation between the experiential mode and instrumental interaction is observed in the patients' group.

These findings support the development of information and system strategies to support the operation of dual processes underlying doctors' and patients' instrumental and affective interactions, facilitate evaluation and sense-making of interaction activities, and motivate knowledge contribution.

This study uncovers the invariance and variability in the relationships between salient cognitive activities and behavioural responses in doctors' and patients' use of OHCs and the impact of user identity on variability.

With the advent of the Digital 2.0 era, online doctor–patient (D–P) interaction has become increasingly popular. However, due to the fact that doctors use their fragmented time to serve patients, online D–P interaction inevitably has some problems, such as the lack of pertinence in the reply content and doctors' relative unfamiliarity with their individual patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to excavate whether potential D–P social ties and D–P knowledge ties accentuate or attenuate the influence of patient selection (online and offline selection).

The authors used the methods of text mining and empirical analysis on the structured and unstructured data of an online consultation platform in China to examine the research hypotheses.

The findings illustrate that the potential D–P social ties increase the influence on patient selection, as do the potential D–P knowledge ties. Specifically, the effect of social ties on patient selection is positively moderated by patient health literacy. Conversely, health literacy weakens the link between knowledge ties and patient selection. In addition, the doctor's title weakens the influence of social ties on patient selection, in contrast to knowledge ties (partially).

This study provides guidance for doctors and patients on how to communicate effectively and alleviate tension within D–P relationships. The study’s findings have both theoretical and practical implications for both doctors' and online platforms' decision-making.

The aim of this paper is to examine how patients' loyalty, and confidence in their doctors, are influenced by doctors' interaction behavior, namely, listening and explaining behavior.

Primary data were collected through a survey of patients in an advanced developing economy – India. Patients visiting the same specialist doctor more than three times a year, in selected clinics in the city of Mumbai, were asked to complete the study instrument. All the constructs were measured using multiple items and well‐established scales were revalidated to suit the context of the research. A total of 320 responses were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results confirm that the doctor‐patient relationship is positively influenced by the interaction behavior of service providers, i.e. doctors. The study demonstrates that doctors' interaction behavior is instrumental in developing an effective relationship with their patients and boosts patients' confidence in their doctors. Furthermore, effective interaction enhances patients' loyalty to their service providers.

This would appear to be the first study of its kind conducted in the context of an advanced developing economy. The study suggests that development of effective communication skills in doctors warrants due attention in medical education. Furthermore, this study validates relevant measurement scales in India's context.

Outpatient departments (OPDs) need to monitor the quality of care and patient satisfaction for continuous quality improvement. Additionally, there is a need for an increase in focused literature on patient satisfaction and quality of health care at a tertiary care level. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to fulfil this need.

A cross‐sectional hospital‐based study among OPD patients was undertaken, where investigators conducted interviews with 120 patients at entry (registration), 120 patients at the OPD clinic (60 doctor‐patient interactions and 60 exit interviews), and a further 120 patients at investigation facilities. Patient satisfaction, client convenience facilities, prescription quality, doctor‐patient interaction and other quality elements as described in the study were given score of 0 or 1.

At exit, 52 (86.6 percent) patients were satisfied with the OPD care. The mean total quality score was 80.9 percent of the total scores. It was above 90 percent of the total score for patient convenience facilities and for doctor‐patient interaction, 76 percent for the prescription quality of the doctors and 43.3 percent for signage display. The mean score for patient‐doctor interaction was found to be significantly lower (3.6/5) among dissatisfied patients compared to the satisfied patients (4.7/5). Satisfied patients reported a significantly higher consultation time (12.4 minutes) with a doctor compared to dissatisfied patients (8.5 minutes) (p=0.04).

Not using a Likert scale to measure patient satisfaction could be considered a limitation. However, the authors also arrived at similar conclusions with their tools as with the use of Likert scales in other studies. Furthermore, findings are limited to medicine and surgery general OPDs in a tertiary care setting. Any interpretation beyond this frame may be done with caution.

Hospitals should encourage good patient‐doctor interaction as it has emerged as the key factor associated with patient satisfaction.

Quality improvements in public sector health institutes can lead to better utilization of health care by the poor and compromised sections of society and can lead to a reduction in the inequity associated with health care.

This paper fulfils the need to evaluate quality of hospital care in public sector hospitals at the tertiary care level. The methods and tools used are simple and extensive enough to capture information at multiple service points.

This study illustrates that differences across health-related websites, as well as different Internet usage patterns, have significant implications for how individuals view and interact with their health care providers.

We rely on a qualitative study of three health-related websites and an ordinary least squares regression analysis of survey data to explore how websites with different organizational motives frame health-related issues and how variations in Internet usage patterns affect patients’ perceptions of the patient-doctor interaction.

Results reveal differences across three health-related websites and show that both the number and the type of websites patients visit affect their perceptions of physicians’ responses. Specifically, visiting multiple websites decreased perceptions of how well doctors listened to or answered patients’ questions, whereas using nonprofit or government health-related websites increased evaluations of how well doctors listened to and answered questions.

This study suggests that practitioners and scholars should look more closely at how patients use the Internet to understand how it affects doctor-patient interactions. Future research could expand the analysis of website framing or use methods such as in-depth interviewing to more fully understand on-the-ground processes and mechanisms.

This study highlights the importance of fleshing out nuances about what it means to be an Internet-informed patient given that varying patterns of Internet use may affect how patients perceive their physicians.

Despite the prevalent use of professional status and service feedback in online healthcare markets, the potential interaction relationship between two types of information is still unknown. This study used the signaling theory to examine the substitute relationship between professional status and service feedback in patients' doctor choice, as well as the moderating effect of illness severity.

To test the paper's hypotheses, we constructed a panel data model using 418 doctors' data collected over a period of six months from an online healthcare market in China. Then, according to the results of the Hausman test, we estimated a fixed-effects model of patients' choice in online healthcare markets.

The empirical results showed that the effect of a doctor's professional status and service feedback on a patient's doctor choice was substitutable. Moreover, patients' illness severity played a moderating role, in that the influence of professional status on a patient with high-severity illness was higher than that on a patient with low-severity illness, whereas the influence of service feedback on a patient with low-severity illness was higher than that of a patient with high-severity illness. In addition, we found that illness severity negatively moderated the substitute relationship between professional status and service feedback on a patient's choice.

These findings not only contribute to signaling theory and research on online healthcare markets, but also help us understand the importance of professional status and service feedback on a patient's choice when seeking a doctor online.

Purpose: The Internet provides patients easy access to scientific information originally, limited to medical professionals. However, this information may not be entirely relevant to the patient’s context. Therefore, doctor–patient conversations need to contextualize this information to the specific circumstances of the patient’s illness. A problem exists insofar as this conversation may not always meet the patient’s expectations. Interpersonal competence, an important aspect of emotional intelligence, is therefore critical for medical practice in the digital era. “Medicine” is viewed as a “masculine” profession requiring competence, while compassion as “feminine”. Gender stereotyped socialization prescribes gender - congruent emotional display norms for men and women thereby, influencing both gender behavior and emotions. Psychological androgyny is the coexistence of masculine and feminine behavior traits in the same individual irrespective of biological sex. This leads to responses, which are appropriate for situations irrespective of biological sex, rather than gender-stereotyped behaviour. In this study, I explored the role of gender personality and interpersonal competence in doctor–patient interaction.

Design/ methodology/approach: Sixty Indian doctors across different specializations completed the self-report format of emotional intelligence appraisal (Emotional Intelligence Appraisal-EIA) as measure of interpersonal competence and Bem’s Sex role Inventory (BSRI) as a measure of psychological androgyny.

Findings: Psychologically androgynous doctors scored significantly higher on interpersonal competence than non-androgynous doctors.

Practical implication: Since both male and female doctors undergo similar training, there is a need to explore in greater depth the nature of the relationship between androgynous gender behaviors in doctors and corresponding interpersonal competence correlates, to understand their impact on patient care and healthcare related outcomes for both patients and doctors. This is especially critical because, in addition to increasing incidents of violence against doctors in Internet-empowered world, previous research also points to varying patient outcomes and legal complications based on biological sex of doctors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence the patients’ intentions to visit doctors face-to-face for consultations from the perspective of online doctor–patient interaction. Justice theory, SERVQUAL and the halo effect are integrated to develop a research model based on the performance-evaluation-outcome framework. The authors hypothesize that perceived justice and service quality are the significant factors in reflecting the performance of online doctor–patient interaction, which influences patient satisfaction evaluation and online and offline behavioral intentions.

The study conducted an online survey to collect data. Patients on a healthcare consulting website were invited to participate in the survey. The research model and hypotheses were tested with 254 collected data from patients and analyzed using the partial least squares method.

The results show that perceived justice and service quality have a positive effect on patient satisfaction, and satisfaction and the intention of online consultation have a positive effect on the intention of face-to-face consultation.

This study offers suggestions on how doctors interact with patients and build their brand image. The findings also offer effective insights into improving doctors’ online services to retain patients and even encourage patients to go to clinics.

Online health consultation is one of the most popular online health services and is growing quickly. After patients consult online doctors, they are able to visit their doctors in person for further diagnosis and treatment if they have the need. This study investigates how patients’ online interactive experience influences their offline behavioral intentions, which are different from most of the past literature on eHealth.

This paper aims to explore how hospitable telemedicine services empowered patients during the COVID-19. Expanding from the technology aspect, this research integrated the philosophy of hospitality organizational culture by including factors related to human-human interaction as significant predictors for patients’ sense of empowerment (perceived competence and control) in coping with their emotional stress (anxiety and isolation).

Survey data were obtained from 409 general consumers who have used video-based virtual consultation since February 2020. Stepwise multiple regression and simple linear regression analyses were used for hypotheses testing.

The results reveal that the doctors’ reliability, responsiveness and empathy significantly predict patients’ perceived competence and control. Perceived usefulness and convenience of telemedicine technology enhance patients’ perceived competence and control. Patients’ sense of empowerment significantly reduces their anxiety and sense of isolation.

To fully understand the role of hospitality in people’s telemedicine experiences, future studies are encouraged to not only examine the patients-clinicians interactions but also explore the patients-support staff interactions.

Health care providers’ “bed-side” manners empower patients in managing their emotional stress. Health care providers should be trained for their empathetic ability and communication skills. Strategies such as collaborating with hospitality schools and business schools can be implemented to help build medical student’s patient-centric attitudes and skills.

This paper provided empirical evidence for the value of hospitality in health care and offered useful suggestions for health care providers, especially by empowering vulnerable people during catastrophic events such as COVID-19.