Written by James Anderson
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Patient-centered healthcare is commonly associated with respectful communication, preference elicitation, shared decisions, and responsiveness to individual needs. These practices are necessary but may be insufficient when patients do not feel able to question clinicians, reveal uncertainty, disclose sensitive information, disagree, or communicate vulnerability without anticipating relational cost. This conceptual article reconstructs patient-centeredness around three distinct but interacting re
Written by Hans Müller
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Health decisions are commonly represented as products of individual knowledge, preferences, beliefs, intentions, or risk appraisal. Such representations are useful but incomplete because patient action unfolds within social relationships, material constraints, healthcare organizations, information environments, and changing illness states. This conceptual article develops a proposed behavioral architecture in which beliefs and expectations remain important but acquire behavioral significance thr
Written by Sofía Martínez
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Patient satisfaction remains one of the most visible indicators of healthcare performance, yet satisfaction alone cannot explain what patients experienced, what those experiences meant to them, or why apparently similar encounters generate different judgments of care quality. This conceptual article develops a psychosocial account of perceived care quality that separates care events from their interpretation. It argues that satisfaction is best understood as a downstream evaluative judgment shap
Written by Kenji Tanaka
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Chronic disease is commonly organized clinically around diagnoses, symptoms, treatments, and measurable outcomes, yet its consequences also unfold through biography, identity, relationships, social recognition, everyday participation, and repeated encounters with healthcare. This article develops a social-life account of chronic disease in which these domains are treated as interacting but analytically distinct processes. The central argument is that long-term illness does not simply impose a st
Written by João Silva
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Healthcare trust becomes most consequential when patients cannot independently verify what clinicians or institutions know, whether recommendations are reliable, or how competing risks should be interpreted. Yet trust is often treated as a stable attitude or a single relational outcome. This conceptual article argues instead that healthcare trust is an uncertainty-sensitive judgment formed across interpersonal and institutional levels. Evidence concerning clinician behavior, participation, commu
Written by Emma Wilson
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Health communication is often evaluated as though its principal task were accurate transmission: clinicians provide information, patients receive it, and success is inferred from recall, satisfaction, or adherence. This article argues that such a model is too narrow for encounters in which patients must interpret uncertainty, express emotion, negotiate authority, disclose concerns, and determine whether they can meaningfully participate. Drawing on contemporary evidence from patient–clinician co
Written by Mark Anderson
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Healthcare inequity is often described through differences in access, utilization, adherence, or health behavior, yet these downstream observations can conceal the psychological consequences of unequal social conditions. This article develops a proposed structural-to-psychological account of healthcare inequity in which structural disadvantage alters not only material resources but also the conditions under which health-related decisions are made. Material scarcity can narrow feasible options; d
Written by Sara Al-Fahd
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Resilience in illness is often treated as a stable personal resource, yet illness journeys alter physiological burden, emotional demands, coping options, relationships, and opportunities to participate in care. This article develops a proposed biopsychosocial theory in which patient resilience is a time-varying capacity to preserve or reorganize adaptive functioning under illness-related demand. Biological burden constrains feasible adaptation; appraisal and emotional regulation shape interpreta
Written by Youssef Hariri
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Healthcare navigation is commonly treated as a practical matter of finding services, following instructions, and completing administrative steps. This framing underestimates the psychological work required to transform a fragmented healthcare system into a usable sequence of actions. Patients may need to locate information, interpret competing instructions, remember deadlines, coordinate professionals, evaluate digital messages, tolerate uncertainty, and repeatedly decide what deserves attention
Written by David Osei
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Health behavior is often explained through motivation, knowledge, intention, or self-regulatory capacity, yet these constructs alone cannot account for why people frequently sustain behaviors they wish to change or abandon behaviors they value. This conceptual article develops a contextual theory in which behavioral persistence reflects the temporary stability of relations among motivation, automaticity, social influence, material opportunity, healthcare alignment, and recurrent friction and rei
Written by Kristian Eriksen
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Quality care is usually evaluated through technical competence, safety, access, coordination, and outcomes, yet patients also encounter healthcare as an emotionally consequential relationship. This article argues that compassion, recognition, respect, emotional validation, and relational presence are not optional interpersonal additions to competent care but potential foundations that shape how care is interpreted, whether patients feel safe enough to participate, and how clinical recommendation
Written by Mikko Lahtinen
Published in Vol 6 Issue 1, 2026
Healthcare stigma is often approached as a problem of prejudicial attitudes held by individual professionals or members of the public. That perspective captures an important component of stigma but is insufficient for explaining how stigmatizing conditions are generated, reproduced, anticipated, internalized, resisted, or amplified across healthcare systems. This conceptual article argues that healthcare stigma is better understood as a dynamic multilevel social process whose effects depend on i
