a Purdue University - Brian Lamb School of Communication , West Lafayette , IN , USA.
J Health Commun. 2018;23(5):462-469. doi: 10.1080/10810730.2018.1465492. Epub 2018 Apr 27.
Developing engaging online healthcare provider biographies for prospective patients to consult is becoming a big business. Health-care systems are beginning to add more multichannel components-like videos-to these provider search tools at increasingly higher costs. Prior research finds that prospective patients desire videos offering additional footage (i.e., b-roll) displaying how a provider might interact with a patient during a consultation. Shooting and editing b-roll footage to add to providers' videos takes additional time and resources. Using predictions and questions generated from uncertainty reduction and cue summation theories, this study sought to determine whether the addition of multichannel media (e.g., a video with added b-roll) offers any greater effects in the form of reduced uncertainty, provider likability, patient satisfaction, or trust than biographies providing fewer multichannel cues. A between-subjects online experiment randomly exposed participants (n = 523) to one of four biographies with increasing levels of multichannel components (i.e., text only biography, text with picture, video, video with b-roll). Results revealed that the two video biographies generated more significant effects than text-only biographies. However, the biography with just the video of the provider (i.e., a-roll only) and the video including added b-roll were not significantly different from one another on any of the dependent variables measured. These findings indicate that there may be a limit to the number of multichannel components needed to be an effective biography to help patients select their next healthcare provider. Both theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed, in addition to future directions for research.
为潜在患者开发引人入胜的在线医疗服务提供者简介正成为一项大生意。医疗保健系统开始在这些提供者搜索工具中添加更多多渠道组件，如视频，成本也越来越高。先前的研究发现，潜在患者希望视频提供额外的镜头（即 b 镜头），展示提供者在咨询期间可能与患者的互动方式。拍摄和编辑 b 镜头以添加到提供者的视频中需要额外的时间和资源。本研究使用不确定性减少和线索总和理论产生的预测和问题，试图确定添加多渠道媒体（例如，带有附加 b 镜头的视频）是否会以降低不确定性、提供者的吸引力、患者满意度或信任度的形式提供任何更大的效果，而不是提供较少多渠道线索的简介。一项基于参与者的在线实验随机向参与者（n=523）展示了四种简介中的一种，这些简介的多渠道组件逐渐增加（即仅文本简介、带图片的文本、视频、带 b 镜头的视频）。结果表明，两个视频简介比仅文本简介产生了更显著的效果。然而，仅提供提供者视频（即仅 a 镜头）和包括附加 b 镜头的视频在任何测量的因变量上彼此之间没有显著差异。这些发现表明，为帮助患者选择下一位医疗保健提供者，可能存在一个有效简介所需的多渠道组件数量的限制。除了未来的研究方向外，还讨论了这些结果的理论和实际意义。
