Communication - Practical Health Psychology

2025-02-212025-11-04Communication, Interventions, Physical activity

Making Every Health Care Consultation Count: Promoting physical activity in health care settings

By Amanda Daley, Loughborough University, UK In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Making Every Contact Count initiative aims to use the thousands of consultations that take place every day between health professionals and patients, to promote healthy behavioural changes. […]

2024-05-242025-11-04Communication

Understanding what influences organ donation

By Dr Lee Shepherd, Northumbria University, UK and Professor Ronan E. O’Carroll, University of Stirling, UK and Professor Eamonn Ferguson, University of Nottingham, UK There are numerous stories of how deceased organ transplantation has offered a lifeline for people. Indeed, […]

2023-03-222025-11-04Communication

Effective risk communication is about more than behaviour change: let’s talk about personal risk appraisals

By Victoria Woof and David French, Manchester Centre for Health Psychology, University of Manchester, UK Traditionally in medicine and health psychology, healthcare professionals have provided patients with their personalised disease risks with the aim of preventing disease. Where risk communication […]

2022-08-252025-11-04Communication

Lost (and found) in translation: Effective communication with patients

By Zuzana Dankulincova, Pavol Jozef Safarik University, Slovakia While most researchers are aware that disseminating study results is part of their ethical responsibility to research participants (and wish for their research findings to have clear, practical implications), the transition from […]

2021-11-252025-11-04Assessment, Communication, Illness representation, Stress and Coping

Helping patients manage their condition: Illness representations matter

By Yael Benyamini, Tel Aviv University, Israel and Evangelos C. Karademas, University of Crete, Greece Anna and Mary are both healthy 45-year-old women, living in a large European city. Each of them knows several people who have contracted COVID-19 and […]

2021-03-232025-11-04Communication, Goal setting

Teaching practitioners Healthy Conversation Skills

By Wendy Lawrence, University of Southampton The main causes of death and disease in society today are influenced by our lifestyle choices, and there is a growing focus on ways to improve health behaviours. Front-line practitioners, particularly those working in […]

2020-04-102025-11-04Communication

Insights from behavioural science for the COVID-19 pandemic

By Shane Timmons, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland Governments worldwide have mobilised to try to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, but the behaviour of individuals will be vital to their success. We – the Behavioural Research Unit […]

2020-02-042025-11-04Communication, Motivation, Self-regulation

Are your clients being defensive? If so, self-affirmation may help.

Peter Harris and Ian Hadden, The Self-Affirmation Research Group, School of Psychology, University of Sussex, UK Have you ever been reluctant to face up to something you’d rather ignore? Maybe your fondness for something bad for you that you eat […]

2019-09-072025-12-01Communication

Raising weight in a consultation

By Jane Ogden, University of Surrey, UK Weight is a tricky problem to talk about in a consultation. Some patients may be sick of hearing the words ‘You could lose some weight’ every time they visit the clinic: regardless of […]

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