The Power of Words: Deliberation dialogue as a model to favor patient engagement in chronic care

The concept of patient engagement is attracting growing attention from scholars working on doctor-patient interactions. It refers to the condition in which patients are fully aware of their medical condition and willing to be active both in the relationship with their caregivers and towards the health care institutions. However, the operative steps necessary to achieve patient engagement have not yet been fully described. This chapter focuses on the communicative dimension of engagement. Communication is shown to be a pivotal means to improve patient self-efficacy and commitment, both fundamental components of engagement. In particular, the authors take a closer look at the process of decision making in chronic care settings, and propose a normative model to analyze and evaluate the quality of decision making in consultations. It is argued that the model can also be used as a blueprint to create training materials for clinicians.