| Summary: | Introduction
Patient–provider communication quality is instrumental for healthy
outcomes in patients. The objective of this study is to examine the relationships
between patient–provider communication quality and participant characteristics,
perception of e-cigarette harmfulness, and smoking outcomes.
Methods
A pooled cross-sectional design was used on secondary data obtained
from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 5 from Cycle 1
through Cycle 4, from 2017–2022. Our final sample contained 3511 observations.
Our outcome variable was the perception of electronic cigarette smoking status.
The independent variable was patient–provider communication quality (PPCQ),
measured from a series of questions with responses on a 4-item Likert scale
(always, usually, sometimes, never). Demographic variables such as marital status,
health insurance status, occupation status, and health-related variables were used
as participant characteristics. Ordinal logistic regression models were used to
examine the above relationships.
Results
Compared to males, females had lower odds of being in a higher category of
perception of e-cigarette harmfulness compared to other categories of e-cigarette
harmfulness (AOR=0.66; 95% CI: 0.57–0.76). Respondents who were non-Hispanic
Black or Hispanic had lower odds of being in a higher category of perception of
e-cigarettes compared to Whites (AOR=0.52; 95% CI: 0.49–0.78, and AOR=0.51;
95% CI: 0.41–0.65, respectively). Respondents who had higher education level
compared to those with less than high school had lower odds (AOR=0.30; 95% CI:
0.17–0.51), and Hispanics compared to Whites had higher odds (AOR=1.59; 95%
CI: 1.05–2.40), of being former smokers rather than current smokers.
Conclusions
Providers should invest in staff training and development to target the
populations that need conversations regarding e-cigarette usage.
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