Improving healthcare providers’ face-to-face interactions with clients living with or at-risk for HIV

Key take-home messages

• Providers who pay attention to their clients’ health literacy or to their own communication techniques spend more time discussing health behaviour change during visits, and their clients report greater satisfaction with their communication.
• While most interventions improve client perceptions of communication and attention, these changes in perception do not always translate into actual improvements in health literacy, health knowledge or treatment adherence.
• Effective interventions involved multiple strength-building sessions in which the approach and information were tailored to the clients’ circumstances (e.g. readiness to change, literacy level, health status, barriers to change).
• Key strategies for improving client-provider interactions include presenting information clearly by using plain language, organizing discussion points by priority (the most important information should be discussed first) (9), and using visual aids to support messaging.
• Client-provider interactions can also be improved by framing HIV risk and explaining how risks can change and accumulate over time based on behaviours.
• Motivational interviewing can enhance one’s understanding and retention of information and can improve adherence to medication and/or behaviour change.

• Population(s)
  • General HIV+ population
  • General HIV- population
• Health Systems
  • Delivery arrangements