Page 167 - GHES-3-2

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability
Online health community reviews

As the primary subjects of these reviews are doctors and the patients. In addition, the term “attitude” also constitutes
patients, the terms “doctor” and “patient” had the highest a significant proportion across all review types, highlighting
frequency count. To identify other keywords in the the importance of the doctor’s attitude during diagnosis and
reviews and analyze their relationship with the respective treatment in the minds of patients. If a doctor meticulously
diseases, we removed the terms “doctor” and “patient” and treats the patient, receives them with kindness, or speaks in
recalculated the word frequency from the reviews (Table 2). a gentle tone, it creates a positive impression of the doctor’s
Our findings in Table 2 indicate that patients are more attitude, leading to positive evaluations in patient reviews.
concerned about the professional title of doctors, namely, However, if a doctor speaks rudely or is absent during
whether doctors are chief physicians or professors. The treatment, patients may perceive the doctor as having a poor
terms “attitude” and “patience” were also frequently used in attitude, resulting in negative reviews.
the reviews, and their frequency was comparable to other For the positive reviews, the term “skill” is relatively
terms, including “medical” and “illness.” Collectively, the prominent, reflecting patients’ focus on the doctor’s
word frequency results and the generally positive sentiments medical abilities when making positive evaluations.
of the reviews suggest that doctors have a good attitude and Combined with the positive emotions in the reviews,
patience toward the patients and their condition. patients generally commend doctors for their excellent
After stopping word segmentation, a third-party medical skills, extensive experience, accurate diagnosis,
module, WordCloud was utilized to generate the word and appropriate medication prescriptions. Furthermore, it
cloud of the terms used in the reviews (Figure 2). can be inferred from the positive reviews that patients also
Figure 2A-D corresponds to the word cloud for all reviews, consider their own “condition” and “improvement,” the
positive reviews, negative reviews, and neutral reviews, doctor’s “patience” and “attitude,” the doctor’s “director”
respectively. The term “patience” holds a dominant title, and expressions of “thanks” to the doctor (Figure 2B).
position across all review types, indicating that regardless In the word cloud diagram for the negative reviews
of the patient’s emotional orientation, the doctor’s patience (Figure 2C), apart from focusing on the doctor’s attitude
is a crucial factor influencing their perception of the and patience, the main concern of patients is the “reply.” It
doctor. Doctors who patiently listen to patients’ histories, can be speculated that untimely responses or poor-quality
explain illnesses, and answer questions are often praised by replies from doctors are significant factors contributing to
patients in most of the positive reviews. Conversely, doctors negative patient reviews. The high frequency of the term
who are insufficiently patient in answering questions or “responsible” in negative reviews suggests that patients
listening to patients tend to receive negative reviews from believe responsibility is an essential quality that doctors

Table 1. Comparative analysis of patient sentiments in reviews for different diseases
Review type Diabetes (n=33274) Leukemia (n=11021) Depression (n=41130)
Quantity Proportion (%) Quantity Proportion (%) Quantity Proportion (%)
Positive 26462 79.53 9058 82.19 33079 80.42
Negative 3075 9.24 837 7.59 3454 8.40
Neural 3737 11.23 1126 10.22 4597 11.18

Table 2. Frequency of words used in the reviews
1 2 3 4 5
Word Frequency Word Frequency Word Frequency Word Frequency Word Frequency
Director 11887 Patience 3811 Medical skill 1813 Patience 1182 Patience 1071
Patience 6321 Director 2474 Attitude 1471 Therapy 1052 Attitude 1044
Professor 3574 Therapy 2390 Patience 1465 Traditional 1023 Traditional 867
medicine medicine
Attitude 3335 Traditional 1935 Therapy 1115 Attitude 888 Therapy 680
medicine
Traditional 2306 Attitude 1907 State 972 State 838 State 630
medicine
Note: The five categories (1 – 5) refer to the 25 high-frequency words that appear in the comments and their frequency of occurrence.

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 159 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.7052