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

Patient satisfaction surveys are increasingly used to measure consulting quality and outcome, but little is known of how good doctors are at judging their patients' satisfaction with their consultations.

To determine if patient satisfaction and enablement following a consultation are correlated with both inexperienced and experienced doctors' predictions of patient satisfaction and doctors' own satisfaction with the consultation.

Cross-sectional questionnaire-based observational study.

Scottish general practices.

Using a post-consultation questionnaire we compared doctors' estimates of patient satisfaction with the consultation; doctors' own satisfaction with the consultation; scores on the Patient Enablement Instrument (PEI) and the Consultation Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ).

Twenty-nine doctors and 1848 patients took part. Each doctor recorded an average of 63.7 (SD: 32.1) consultations. Patient measures of satisfaction and enablement were only weakly correlated with doctor predictions of patient satisfaction (rs=0.07 for PEI and 0.13 for CSQ; both P<0.01) or doctor satisfaction (rs=0.10 for PEI and 0.12 for CSQ; both P<0.01) with the consultation. They were, however, moderately well correlated (rs=0.50 P<0.01) with one another.

Doctors are poor at predicting patient satisfaction in the consultation. Further research is required to determine the reasons for this.