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Doctors And Patients Wish Their Relationship Was Better

February 10th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Health Tips, Research
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Physicians said in a survey that noncompliance with advice or treatment recommendations was their foremost complaint about their patients. Most said it affected their ability to provide optimal care and more 37 percent said it did so “a lot.”

Three-quarters of patients said they were highly satisfied with their doctors. But they still had complaints ranging from long wait times to ineffective treatments.

Those are just some of the findings from two surveys, the first a poll of 660 primary care physicians conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center in September 2010 and the second a poll of 49,000 Consumer Reports subscribers in 2009. The magazine reported its results online.

In the doctors’ poll, physicians named these top challenges:

— 76 percent of doctors said when it came to getting better medical care, forming a long-term relationship with a primary care physician would help “very much.”

— 61 percent said being respectful and courteous toward doctors would help “very much,” while 70 percent said respect and appreciation from patients had gotten “a little” or “much” worse since they had started practicing medicine. This was a two-way street, since patients reported the same feelings.

— 42 percent physicians said health plan rules and regulations interfered “a lot” with the care they provided.

Also noted in the poll, 37 percent of physicians thought they were “very” effective when it comes to minimizing pain and discomfort for their patients, though 97 percent thought they were “somewhat” effective. But, 79 percent of patients said their doctor helped to minimize their pain or discomfort, according to the Consumer Reports blog. The gap might be explained by doctors thinking of their overall effectiveness with all of their patients, including those with chronic pain conditions that are difficult to diagnose and treat, and who are as a group less satisfied with their physicians. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Medicine Is A Human Thing

April 7th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays, True Stories
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If there is a central theme to this blog, it is this: Medicine is a human thing.

On the Facebook page of my podcast, I recently asked for readers to tell me some of the “war stories” they have from the doctor’s office. What are some of the bad things doctors do wrong? I quickly followed this with the flip side, asking readers to comment on the best interactions that they’ve had with their doctors.

The response was overwhelming, and equally quick to both rant and rave. They told stories about doctors who didn’t listen, explain, or even talk with them. They told about arrogance and disconnectedness from the people from whom they were seeking help. They also told about doctors who took extra effort to listen and to reach out in communication. They talked about doctors who genuinely seemed to value them as humans. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*