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General practitioners' experience and benefits from patient evaluations.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: It has now for many years been recognised that patient evaluations should be undertaken as an integral part of the complex task of improving the quality of general practice care. Yet little is known about the general practitioners' (GPs') benefit from patient evaluations. Aim 1 was to study the impact on the GPs of a patient evaluation and subsequent feedback of results presented at a plenary session comprising a study guide for the results and group discussions. Aim 2 was to study possible facilitators and barriers to the implementations of the results raised by the patient evaluation process. METHODS: A patient evaluation survey of 597 voluntarily participating GPs was performed by means of the EUROPEP questionnaire. Evaluation results were fed back to the GPs as written reports at a single feedback meeting with group discussions of the results. Between 3 and 17 months after the feedback, the 597 GPs received a questionnaire with items addressing their experience with and perceived benefit from the evaluations. RESULTS: 79.4% of the GPs responded. 33% of the responding GPs reported that the patient evaluation had raised their attention to the patient perspective on the quality of general practice care. Job satisfaction had improved among 26%, and 21% had developed a more positive attitude to patient evaluations. 77% of the GPs reported having learnt from the evaluation. 54% had made changes to improve practice, 82% would recommend a patient evaluation to a colleague and 75% would do another patient evaluation if invited. 14% of the GPs had become less positive towards patient evaluations, and job satisfaction had decreased among 3%. CONCLUSIONS: We found a significant impact on the GPs regarding satisfaction with the process and attitude towards patient evaluations, GPs' attention to the patients' perspective on care quality and their job satisfaction. Being benchmarked against the average seemed to raise barriers to the concept of patient evaluations and difficulties interpreting the results may have formed a barrier to their implementation which was partly overcome by adding qualitative data to the quantitative results. The GPs' significant willingness to share and discuss the results with others may have served as a facilitator.

SUBMITTER: Heje HN

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3217866 | biostudies-other | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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General practitioners' experience and benefits from patient evaluations.

Heje Hanne N HN Vedsted Peter P Olesen Frede F

BMC family practice 20111031

<h4>Background</h4>It has now for many years been recognised that patient evaluations should be undertaken as an integral part of the complex task of improving the quality of general practice care. Yet little is known about the general practitioners' (GPs') benefit from patient evaluations. Aim 1 was to study the impact on the GPs of a patient evaluation and subsequent feedback of results presented at a plenary session comprising a study guide for the results and group discussions. Aim 2 was to ...[more]

PMID: 22040039

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Project description:BackgroundIn 2022, NHS England announced plans to ensure that all adult primary care patients in England would have full online access to new data added to their general practitioner (GP) record. However, this plan has not yet been fully implemented. Since April 2020, the GP contract in England has already committed to offering patients full online record access on a prospective basis and on request. However, there has been limited research into UK GPs' experiences and opinions about this practice innovation.ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore the experiences and opinions of GPs in England about patients' access to their full web-based health record, including clinicians' free-text summaries of the consultation (so-called "open notes").MethodsIn March 2022, using a convenience sample, we administered a web-based mixed methods survey of 400 GPs in the United Kingdom to explore their experiences and opinions about the impact on patients and GPs' practices to offer patients full online access to their health records. Participants were recruited using the clinician marketing service Doctors.net.uk from registered GPs currently working in England. We conducted a qualitative descriptive analysis of written responses ("comments") to 4 open-ended questions embedded in a web-based questionnaire.ResultsOf 400 GPs, 224 (56%) left comments that were classified into 4 major themes: increased strain on GP practices, the potential to harm patients, changes to documentation, and legal concerns. GPs believed that patient access would lead to extra work for them, reduced efficiency, and increased burnout. The participants also believed that access would increase patient anxiety and incur risks to patient safety. Experienced and perceived documentation changes included reduced candor and changes to record functionality. Anticipated legal concerns encompassed fears about increased litigation risks and lack of legal guidance to GPs about how to manage documentation that would be read by patients and potential third parties.ConclusionsThis study provides timely information on the views of GPs in England regarding patient access to their web-based health records. Overwhelmingly, GPs were skeptical about the benefits of access both for patients and to their practices. These views are similar to those expressed by clinicians in other countries, including Nordic countries and the United States before patient access. The survey was limited by the convenience sample, and it is not possible to infer that our sample was representative of the opinions of GPs in England. More extensive, qualitative research is required to understand the perspectives of patients in England after experiencing access to their web-based records. Finally, further research is needed to explore objective measures of the impact of patient access to their records on health outcomes, clinician workload, and changes to documentation.

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General practitioners' experience and benefits from patient evaluations.

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General practitioners' experience and benefits from patient evaluations.

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