Authors (including presenting author) :
Cheung KL(1)
Affiliation :
Family Medicine and Primary Health Care, KWC
Introduction :
Consultation is a dynamic process, patient’s behaviours and expectation can affect doctor patient relationship. We often emphasize on communication skills in medical training. However, proper patient education on behaviours in consultation may serve additional way to improve doctor patient relationship.
Objectives :
To find out from the doctors’ perspective
1. The annoying factors relating to patients’ behaviours in primary care consultation
2. The frequency and the impact of these factors.
3. Suggesting solutions
Methodology :
We conducted two focus group interviews with junior and senior doctors.The participants included vocational trainees, specialists, associate consultants and consultants. The interviews were conducted in Cantonese. Five standard questions were set and one facilitator was available to facilitate the discussions. Discussion points were jot down. Different themes were extracted and grouped into different categories.
Result & Outcome :
Two focus group interviews were conducted. 17 junior and 20 senior doctors participated. We could group the annoying factors relating to patients’ behaviours into three categories, namely: patient manners, clinic workflow and patient expectation.
For patient manners, five themes were identified: noise making in lobby; using cell phones during consultations; intruding into consultation room without permission; impolite wordings showing disrespect and poor hygiene.
For clinic workflow, three themes were noted: not familiarizing with clinic workflow, e,g, no temperature taking before consultation; inattention to the calling of queuing number and poor preparation of important clinical information.
For patient expectations, four themes were identified: expecting to handle multiple problems at one go without prioritization; delaying consultation of sinister symptoms till appointment of chronic disease follow up; unawareness of drug limitation in GOPC; asking GOPC doctors to review results of investigations ordered by secondary care.
The above factors occur every day. They interrupt the consultation flow and disturb the thinking process of attending doctor. It results in time wasting, contributing risk of mixing up patients’ identities. Colleague’s emotion is being affected.
To educate patient for proper manner and expectation of consultation in GOPC, colleagues suggested using audiovisual format, e.g. poster, video, with sound and image. It is better to highlight how the changes will benefit the patients.
And they suggest changing the hardware and emphasis teamwork to educate patients about the clinic workflow. All the staff should remind patients about the journey of consultation, and with the same tune on the expectation of patients.
