Background. Primary care waiting rooms can be sites of health promotion and health literacy development through the provision of readily accessible health information. To date, few studies have considered patient engagement with televised health messages in the waiting room, nor have studies investigated whether patients ask their clinicians about this information. The aim of this study was therefore to examine patient (or accompanying person) and clinician engagement with waiting room health information, including televised health messages. Design and methods. The mixed methods case study was undertaken in a regional general practice in Victoria, Australia, utilising patient questionnaires, waiting room observations, and clinician logbooks and interviews. The qualitative data were analysed by content analysis; the questionnaire data were analysed using descriptive statistics. Results. Patients engaged with a range of health information in the waiting room and reportedly received health messages from this information. 44% of the questionnaire respondents (33 of 74) reported watching the television health program, and half of these reported receiving a take home health message from this source. Only one of the clinicians (N=9) recalled a patient asking about the televised health program. Conclusions. The general practice waiting room remains a site where people engage with the available health information, with a televised health ‘infotainment’ program receiving most attention from patients. Our study showed that consumption of health information was primarily passive and tended not to activate patient discussions with clinicians. Future studies could investigate any link between the health infotainment program and behaviour change.

Patient-centred care is considered a cornerstone of effective healthcare. It is an approach that acknowledges the patient as a person rather than a disease and that views the doctor-patient relationship as an alliance. This chapter examines the contributions of patients as co-participants in patient-centred care through a case study of a general practice in Australia: data are 15 audio-recorded doctor-patient consultations which were analysed for features of casual conversation, informed by a functional model of language. The findings suggest that patients actively engaged in contributing to the doctor-patient relationship through social talk, humour, laughter, and reciprocity. Implications are that the construct of ‘relationship-centred care’ may be a better way of envisaging how patients and doctors can collaborate for healthcare goals.