Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

11 PATIENT EXPERIENCE Physicians and patients differ on concept of good communication, study finds By Megan Knowles P hysicians, patients and peer clinical reviewers gave significantly different ratings for physicians' com- munication skills, signaling physicians may not fully know what patients consider to be good communication, a study published in Annals of Family Medicine found. Here are four things to know: 1. The researchers looked at survey results from patients who had appointments with 45 family physicians across 13 practices in England. 2. For the survey, 503 pairs of physicians and patients com- pleted a seven-item questionnaire on how well information was communicated during medical appointments, includ- ing how well physicians explained treatments and wheth- er they took patients' problems seriously. Additionally, clinical raters evaluated a sample of 55 of the videotaped sessions using the same seven questions. 3. The researchers then compared patient, physician and rater scores using correlation coefficients. The study found physicians scored themselves lower than patients scored them on average. The average physician score was 74.5, while the average patient score was 94.4. The majority of patients — about 63 percent — gave physicians the maxi- mum score of 100, but the average rater score was about 57 percent. 4. Due to the differences in these scores, physician com- munication evaluations may need to include more than pa- tient satisfaction scores, the authors wrote. Patients may be wary of pointing out bad experiences on a questionnaire, which could explain why patients tend to rate physicians higher than the physicians score themselves, the authors noted. "Patient feedback is, and should remain, a central compo- nent of assessments of the quality of care," the researchers wrote. "Our findings, however, support the role of trained peer assessors in examining the communication practices of physicians in any multisource assessment investigating standards of care." n Study: Patients don't care if physicians have tattoos or piercings By Megan Knowles A lthough hospitals may aim to control how providers visually present themselves to patients, whether a physician has visible tattoos or piercings does not affect patient satisfaction levels, according to a study published in Emergency Medicine Journal. "We were inspired to conduct this study because hospitals have many rules around what constitutes 'professionalism' and some of these rules are excessively stringent and outdated when compared to the general public," study co-author Holly Stankewicz, DO, told ABC News. "We set out to see in this case whether patients actually cared about whether their doctor had a tattoo or a piercing, specif- ically if it affected how they experienced their care, and whether it negatively affected how they perceived their doctor." Here are six things to know: 1. Physicians in the study chose to wear (artificial) non-tra- ditional piercings, stick-on tattoos, neither, or both for nine months while seeing patients each day. The study gathered data from five physicians, including males, females, residents and attending physicians. 2. The physicians were dressed in standard blue scrubs during the study. Since one physician had real tattoos on both arms, he covered them with a white coat on days he chose to have "no art or piercings." 3. e researchers surveyed 924 patients about satisfaction with their care. ey asked patients to rate the physicians' competence, professionalism, empathy, approachability, trustworthiness and reliability. Patients were unaware of the study's purpose. 4. For each of the five physicians included in the study, the survey revealed no difference in how patients perceived their competence, com- fort, professionalism or approachability, regardless of tattoos or piercings. 5. Patients rated the physicians positively on all surveyed qualities 75 percent of the time. ere was no statistically significant difference be- tween days physicians wore a tattoo or piercing compared to days they did not. Ratings did not change if the patients were older or younger than age 50, or between men and women. Participants were not asked whether they disapproved of body art or had it themselves. 6. Dr. Stankewicz thinks the study will help change perceptions of body art. "At our center, I think it was helpful to change perceptions in both the administration and physicians and staff in general," she told ABC News. n

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