General practice consultations - how well do doctors predict patient satisfaction?

BACKGROUND: While patient satisfaction with the general practice consultation has been extensively researched, there have been relatively few studies of doctors' perception of patient satisfaction. This study sought to measure how accurately doctors are able to predict patient satisfaction with consultations in general practice.

METHODS: Adult patients consulting about new episodes of illness in general practice completed a consultation satisfaction questionnaire. The scores from the questionnaire were compared with doctors' predictions of patient satisfaction.

RESULTS: Nine general practitioners completed the study and returned a total of 167 pairs of questionnaires. On average, the patients gave their doctors higher scores on the general satisfaction and professional care scales than on the depth of relationship and perceived time scales of the questionnaire. On every scale, patients reported higher levels of satisfaction than their doctors predicted they would. There was poor correlation between patient and doctor scores for the perceived time scale, but moderate correlation for the other three scales.

DISCUSSION: Our findings suggest that a doctor's sense that a patient was not satisfied following a consultation may be valid, but that doctors may underestimate their patients' satisfaction.