Letters from the radiation oncologist: do referring doctors give a damn?

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Medical Communication
• Healthcare Quality

Background:

• Effective communication between specialists and referring physicians is crucial for patient care continuity.
• Radiation oncologists send post-consultation and treatment letters to referring doctors.
• Previous analyses identified 'essential' information items for these clinical letters.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the completeness of information in letters sent by a radiation oncologist.
• To assess referring physicians' satisfaction with the content of these letters.
• To explore reasons for satisfaction despite potentially incomplete information.

Main Methods:

• Review of 128 consecutive patient letters sent by a radiation oncologist.
• Analysis of the inclusion rate of pre-defined 'essential' information items.
• Anonymous survey of referring doctors and general practitioners (GPs) regarding letter satisfaction.

Main Results:

• Only 60% of identified 'essential' information items were consistently included in the letters.
• 93 out of 103 surveyed physicians (90.3%) rated letter content as satisfactory or very good.
• Only one respondent found the letter content unsatisfactory; nine rated it as average.

Conclusions:

• Physician satisfaction with clinical correspondence may not directly correlate with the completeness of all 'essential' information items.
• Further investigation is needed to understand the factors driving high physician satisfaction with radiation oncology letters.
• Optimizing communication strategies requires balancing information completeness with perceived usefulness by referring physicians.