Patient Characteristics Associated with Making Requests during Primary Care Visits

Area of Science:

• Primary Care Medicine
• Health Services Research
• Patient-Physician Communication

Background:

• Patient requests for medical services are frequent in primary care.
• Understanding patient characteristics predicting these requests is limited.
• These requests can pose challenges for clinicians.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify patient characteristics associated with increased patient requests during primary care visits.
• To inform clinicians about factors influencing patient-initiated service demands.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional analysis of 1319 visits from 1141 adult patients in an academic family medicine practice.
• Post-visit surveys assessed patient requests, sociodemographics, health status, symptom bother, life satisfaction, and personality traits.
• Multivariate analyses examined predictors of request frequency.

Main Results:

• 65.7% of visits involved at least one patient request.
• Older age, increased symptom bother, extroverted personality, higher life satisfaction, and prior physician visits were linked to more requests.
• Specific incidence rate ratios (IRRs) quantified the association for each variable.

Conclusions:

• Primary care physicians should anticipate higher request rates from specific patient profiles.
• Factors like age, symptom severity, personality, life satisfaction, and relationship history influence patient requests.
• This knowledge can aid in managing patient expectations and communication.