Here's a newsflash: If you treat people respectfully, they'll respond favorably.

Here’s a newsflash: If you treat people respectfully, they’ll respond favorably.

More specifically: If doctors treat patients with respect and dignity, patients will respond in ways that may actually have a positive impact on their health.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins accessed data from the Commonwealth Fund 2001 Health Care Quality Survey in which more than 5,500 people throughout the U.S. answered questions about their experiences with doctors.

On the surface the results are not surprising. Patients reported that when treated with dignity during a doctor visit, they were likely to rate the visit with a high level of satisfaction. More importantly, patients responded to dignified care by adhering to suggested therapy and making a better effort with preventive measures.

Here’s what surprised me: Just over 75 percent said they’d been treated with “a great deal of respect and dignity,” and approximately the same percentage said their doctors involved them in the decision-making concerning their healthcare.

I wouldn’t have expected those numbers to be quite so high. On the other hand, there are still one out of four patients who feel their treatment isn’t dignified. That means that millions of people every week receive treatment that doesn’t inspire them to stick to a suggested health regimen.

I think it’s safe to say that many in that 25 percent were probably patients who were treated dismissively when they inquired about alternative healthcare and then left their doctor’s office with a prescription for a statin drug, or an antidepressant, or a COX-2 inhibitor that they had no intention of filling.