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Improving outcome through patient satisfaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Lars K. Hansen
Affiliation:
Fairway's House, Hampshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, email: lh4@soton.ac.uk
David Kingdon
Affiliation:
University of Southampton, Hampshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
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Abstract

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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2011

Thank you to Dr Whelan and colleagues for their constructive comments Reference Whelan, Reddy and Andrews1 regarding the patient satisfaction scale, PatSat. Reference Hansen, Vincent, Harris, David, Surafudheen and Kingdon2 The idea for this scale sprung from years of using home-made scales for the yearly appraisal in a flawed attempt to measure the individual doctor's performance in the eyes of the patient. PatSat is therefore uniquely focused on the relationship between the clinician and the individual patient.

As Whelan et al correctly point out, the patient/doctor relationship is only a part of a patient's overall satisfaction with the service, but PatSat provides an evidence-based fundament for the individual clinician to learn about the relative strengths and weaknesses of his or her practice. The idea is that the clinician then can, through supervision, target areas that need further improvement and build on his or her stronger points.

Whelan and colleagues also allude to the importance of treatment outcome and its possible relationship with patient satisfaction. In spite of inherent problems with patient satisfaction questionnaires, such as the ‘ceiling effect’ (patients often scoring their clinician at the very high end of the spectrum) and poor response rates, the majority of the existing literature on this issue points to a strong correlation between outcome and patient satisfaction, especially with the individual clinician. Reference Day, Bentall, Roberts, Randall, Rogers and Cattell3

The next step would be to investigate the correlation between commonly used, validated rating scales, e.g. the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and patient satisfaction. In the PatSat scale the clinician has a direct way of testing and re-testing his or her personal impact on patients and the hope is therefore that this will provide an important avenue to improving outcomes for patients.

References

1 Whelan, PJ, Reddy, L, Andrews, T. Patient satisfaction rating scales vs. Patient-related Outcome and Experience Measures (e-letter). Psychiatrist 2010 (http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/eletters/34/11/485).Google Scholar
2 Hansen, LK, Vincent, S, Harris, S, David, E, Surafudheen, S, Kingdon, D. A patient satisfaction rating scale for psychiatric service users. Psychiatrist 2010; 34: 485–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Day, JC, Bentall, RP, Roberts, C, Randall, F, Rogers, A, Cattell, D, et al. Attitudes toward antipsychotic medication: the impact of clinical variables and relationships with health professionals. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005; 62: 717–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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