Impression management in doctor-patient communication: experience in Taiwan

In a physical healthcare environment, a doctor's time for each patient is limited. The rise of internet technology has brought new opportunities. Using information gathered from a survey, this study attempted to use the communication platform of medical blogs to explore how impression management, health trust, and online social support affect the impacts of health communication. The partial least squares method was used to analyse these different constructs. According to the empirical results of this study, when doctors use impression strategies to respond to visitor questions on blogs, patients feel that they can understand health information better, and at the same time, patients' usage intention for doctor blogs will increase. In addition, when people receive more social support online, the communication effects of blog use are elevated. This study also demonstrated that health trust can influence medical blog usage intention and health communication.