Title: Significance of physical comfort and emotional support on confidence and trust in healthcare professionals

Authors: A. Bhoomadevi; M. Ganesh; N. Panchanatham

Addresses: Faculty of Management, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (Deemed to be University), India ' Department of Physiology, ACS Medical College, Chennai, India ' Department of Business Administration, Annamalai University, Chidambaram, India

Abstract: Physical comfort and emotional support are principal components of patient-centred care in healthcare delivery, however, they are not given much importance by researchers in India. Furthermore, previous studies done in western countries have given some insights on physical comfort and emotional support. This study precisely aimed to fill these observed gaps by first focusing on the perception of healthcare professionals from the tertiary healthcare centres in Chennai and secondly in understanding the perception of patients from the same setup of hospitals in the major factors of physical comfort and emotional support. Finally, the impact of these two factors on the confidence and trust of healthcare professionals. The results from this study indicated that 'assistance with daily activity' followed by 'emotional support' have influence on confidence and trust of healthcare professionals. In addition, the results exerted strong evidence that patient needs explanation on the medications in the language they can understand, environmental comfort and emotional support. Furthermore, the study provides understandings into the research and managerial implications of such findings.

Keywords: physical comfort; emotional support; confidence and trust; healthcare professionals; patients.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPSPM.2021.118692

International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management, 2021 Vol.8 No.4, pp.422 - 431

Received: 08 Oct 2018
Accepted: 23 Jul 2019
Published online: 03 Nov 2021 *

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