Patient empowerment is becoming an essential tool for improving patient–doctor relationships in the healthcare sector. Past research on empowerment within this sector has focused primarily on hospital staff such as nurses and practitioners, whereas very few studies have focused on patients. Moreover, even less attention has been paid to exploring the effect of patient empowerment on patients' trust in doctors, patient–doctor relationship commitment and patient loyalty. Hence, we investigate the relationships between patient empowerment components (patient education, patient perceived control, doctor support and patient participation), patients' trust in doctors and patient–doctor relationship commitment, which leads to the desired state of patient loyalty. Using hospital-intercept surveys, 234 responses were obtained from patients at a private healthcare facility in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Using partial least-squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) techniques, the results demonstrated that patients who were empowered through education and doctor support were more trusting and that such empowerment also fostered relationship commitment towards their doctor. Patient participation and patients' perceived control did not produce similar outcomes. Consequently, relationship commitment was found to be the dominant predictor in building patient loyalty. This study broadens the dimension of patient empowerment by adding patient education, which is shown to have a positive impact on patient–doctor relationships and to promote patient loyalty. In an increasingly competitive healthcare market where patient loyalty is highly sought after, these findings suggest that empowering patients during healthcare consultation is conducive to the building of long-term relationships between patients and their doctors.

中文翻译：

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患者授权对建立忠诚度很重要吗？

患者赋权正在成为改善医疗保健部门医患关系的重要工具。过去关于该领域赋权的研究主要集中在护士和从业人员等医院工作人员身上，而很少有研究关注患者。此外，探索患者赋权对患者对医生的信任、医患关系承诺和患者忠诚度的影响的关注更少。因此，我们调查了患者授权组成部分（患者教育、患者感知控制、医生支持和患者参与）、患者对医生的信任和医患关系承诺之间的关系，这导致了患者忠诚度的理想状态。使用医院拦截调查，234 份回复来自马来西亚吉隆坡一家私人医疗机构的患者。使用偏最小二乘结构方程模型 (PLS-SEM) 技术，结果表明，通过教育和医生支持获得授权的患者更加信任，并且这种授权也促进了对医生的关系承诺。患者参与和患者感知控制没有产生类似的结果。因此，发现关系承诺是建立患者忠诚度的主要预测因素。本研究通过增加患者教育拓宽了患者赋权的维度，这被证明对医患关系产生积极影响并提高患者忠诚度。