The effect of developing patient compendiums for critical pathways on patient satisfaction

We examined the impact of developing a patient compendium to a critical pathway on patient satisfaction scores. It was our hypothesis that by sharing the contents of a critical pathway, by using a patient compendium, we would improve patient satisfaction by establishing realistic patient expectations for patients undergoing cardiac bypass graft surgery. A satisfaction survey was sent to patients before the hospital began to use the patient compendium to the pathway and to another group of patients after initiation of a compendium. Although there were some trends suggesting an improvement in patient satisfaction scores, there was no statistical difference in satisfaction before or after the compendium was in use.