Ever feel like your advice just doesn't click with patients? If so, you're not alone. A recent survey of diabetic patients found that an overwhelming majority failed to make the lifestyle changes that they knew would help their conditions.

For example, 87 percent of 3,867 people with type 2 diabetes surveyed knew that obesity can aggravate their disease, but only 70 percent said they had tried to lose weight in the previous year, WebMD reports. What's more, 63 percent admitted their doctor had recommended an increase in physical activity in the past year, yet only 13 percent reported exercising within the past week.

Patients were generally good about keeping their medical appointments; more than 80 percent of patients visited (and likely ignored) the doctor at least three times a year.

So, for all of the recent industry emphasis on physician communication, it appears that even ‘good' patients will listen to physicians talk themselves blue in the face every few months and still make little to no change.

The good news is that physicians' use of visual aids and hard numbers appears to motivate patients more than verbal communication alone, according to a new study in BioMed Central's journal BMC Family Practice.

For the study, 22 primary care physicians audiotaped their counseling sessions with a total of 77 patients who had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as a lipid disorder, high blood pressure, or smoking. Although most of the physicians communicated CVD risk with verbal qualifiers alone, patients responded dramatically better when doctors augmented the conversation with pie charts, bar graphs, histograms, absolute risk percentages, relative risk percentages, and naturally occurring frequencies, AAFP News Now reports.

In particular, study authors observed color-coding schemes, indicating low, medium, and high risk seemed to be "powerful and familiar" to patients.

A family physician not involved in the study also shared with AAFP News Now that he's had success typing numbers into the Framingham Cardiovascular Risk Calculator in front of patients. The tool, which originated as part of the Framingham Heart Study, allows the physician to compute a patient's risk of heart attack using current, as well as modified, variables (e.g., if a patient stops smoking) and show the patient how greatly certain changes would improve their health.

"I've seen patients being extremely impressed by seeing it on the computer--more than if I had talked to them about stopping smoking," said Alan Schwartzstein, MD, a member of the AAFP Commission on Health of the Public and Science.

To learn more:
- read the article from AAFP News Now
- read the study (.pdf)
- check out the article from WebMD

Related Articles:
Walk with a Doc program motivates patients, makes physicians more accessible
Physician gender affects communication
Expanded hours, visual aids motivate patients to keep appointments