Can doctors predict patients' satisfaction and enablement? A cross-sectional observational study

Area of Science:

• General Practice and Primary Care
• Patient-Doctor Communication
• Healthcare Quality Measurement

Background:

• Patient satisfaction surveys are increasingly utilized to assess the quality and outcomes of medical consultations.
• However, there is limited understanding of physicians' ability to accurately gauge patient satisfaction levels.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the correlation between patient satisfaction and enablement following consultations.
• To assess how well both inexperienced and experienced doctors predict patient satisfaction.
• To examine the relationship between patient-reported outcomes and doctors' self-reported satisfaction with the consultation.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based observational study was conducted in Scottish general practices.
• Post-consultation questionnaires collected data on doctors' predictions of patient satisfaction, doctors' own satisfaction, and patient enablement and satisfaction scores.
• The Patient Enablement Instrument (PEI) and Consultation Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ) were used to measure patient outcomes.

Main Results:

• The study included 29 doctors and 1848 patients, with each doctor documenting an average of 63.7 consultations.
• Patient satisfaction and enablement showed only weak correlations with doctors' predictions of patient satisfaction (rs=0.07-0.13) and doctors' own satisfaction (rs=0.10-0.12).
• Patient-reported satisfaction and enablement were moderately correlated with each other (rs=0.50).

Conclusions:

• Physicians demonstrate a limited capacity to accurately predict patient satisfaction during consultations.
• Further research is warranted to elucidate the underlying reasons for this discrepancy in perception.