Improving Client-Provider Interaction

Good face-to-face communication between client and provider is often a key ingredient for successful family planning, and programmes must do more to achieve it, according to the new issue of Population Reports, published by the INFO Project at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (CCP).

This report, entitled "Improving Client-Provider Interaction", calls on family planning programmes and providers to consider clients in a broader context, as members of couples, extended families, informal social networks, and the larger community, and to appreciate the economic pressures, social issues, and local beliefs that shape their decisions.

"Conventionally, programs have relied on training to foster good client-provider interaction (CPI). While training is important, many other strategies also need to be in place. To assure good communication between family planning clients and providers, programs need to:

• Define good CPI. Disseminate and reinforce policies, guidelines, job descriptions, and protocols that promote good communication practices;
• Give feedback. Focus supervision on CPI and encourage on-site managers, co-workers, clients, and the community to help evaluate communication;
• Make training more effective. Refine curricula, adopt proven training methods, and support trainees' efforts to apply new skills on the job;
• Educate clients to ask questions. Develop mass media campaigns, print materials and client education that legitimate clients' rights and teach them to ask questions;
• Provide facilities. Make sure providers have the space, supplies, and time that providers need to counsel clients effectively;
• Motivate providers. Recognize and reward superior performance;
• Match qualified workers with jobs. Ensure that providers have the knowledge, attitudes, and skills essential for good CPI."

Providers need to:

• Balance the clients' and providers' roles in decision-making;
• Encourage clients to play an active role;
• Explore clients' thinking about health decisions;
• Address clients' concerns about side effects of contraceptives before and after starting a method."

Click here to access a related peer-reviewed summary on the Health e Communication website, and to participate in peer review.