[Patient's opinions on doctors' explanations (author's transl)]

An inquiry by means of a questionnaire among 1043 persons (566 in-patients, 269 employees of industrial firms, 208 teachers) revealed: 32.5% were "often not" and 26.5% were "nearly always" satisfied with the medical information provided by their doctors. They were mainly interested in the causes of complaints (77.7%), in the prognosis (66.4%), in the effect of the medicament (44.5%) and in the diagnosis, using technical terminology (37.7%). Nearly all of them wanted to know about the contents of the specialist's report: 35.5% would like to read the report for themselves and 61.4% wanted an intelligible explanation by the family doctor. In incurable malignant disease, 49.5% preferred the patient to be fully informed, whereas 24.4% wanted information about a serious illness which might lead to death. Other questions concerned the information of relatives and between doctors.