Brief communicationDo We Know What Patients Want? The Doctor-Patient Communication Gap in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders
Section snippets
Methods
All referrals to a general adult gastroenterology outpatient department at a metropolitan hospital were screened for 6 months. Where referrals indicated a likely FGID, subjects were invited by mail to participate before their specialist consultation. Subjects were not considered if their referral indicated need for an interpreter, confounding comorbidities, or major psychosocial issues. Each patient-gastroenterologist pair independently completed a questionnaire (Appendix 1). After consultation
Participants
Invitations were sent to 75 referred patients. Only 31 attended their specialist appointment. Two opted out, and 2 had missing data, leaving 27 participants with a clinical FGID diagnosis (22 women), mean age, 37.3 years (range, 20–74; median, 32 years), where both patient and gastroenterologist completed questionnaires at initial consultation. Referring GPs for 13 of 27 subjects participated. Mean time from initial encounter to attempted follow up was ∼20 weeks; only 13 of 27 patients were
Discussion
In this novel study in FGIDs, we directly and concurrently examined the perceived needs/expectations of patients and whether their specialists and referring GPs are aware of these patient perceptions. Two striking findings were the high level of miscommunication between patients and specialists and the unexpected fact that only 1 patient owned/acknowledged the FGID diagnosis at follow-up.
Concordance between patients and doctors was acceptable in objective information such as past diagnosis.
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Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.
Funding Supported by Clinical Project Grant, Royal Adelaide Hospital/Hanson Institute, 2009.