ABSTRACT
Health communication literature stresses that patients should be more involved in their treatment and medical decisions by communicating with their physicians assertively, seeking useful information, and evaluating treatments based on their effectiveness. Brashers, Haas, and Neidig (1999) created a scale to measure three dimensions of patient self-advocacy-“(a) increased illness and treatment education, (b) increased assertiveness in health care interactions, and (c) increased potential for nonadherence” (p. 97)—that were originally identified by Brashers, Haas, Klingle, and Neidig (2000). This study was a participant observation, interview, and textual analysis study of AIDS activists in which the three themes emerged; scale items were piloted with 30 HIV patients.
