Abstract
Introduction: Demographic changes in contemporary world create new challenges for medical professionals. As health tends to worsen with age, older adults constitute a growing group of patients in primary care. One of the crucial aspects of patient-centered care is to respond to psychosocial expectations of patients. The aim of the presented study was to analyze how visit-related expectations were met in assessment of patients themselves, as well as how doctors evaluated their patients’ expectations. Also patient satisfaction from the visit was evaluated in regard to fulfillment of psychosocial visit-related needs.
Method: The study participants were 2455 primary care patients, aged 50-97 (M=69. 5; SD=8. 9). They were recruited from randomly chosen primary care facilities in Central Poland. All tools applied in the study were designed and validated within PRACTA project (Jaworski et als. 2016). The Patient Visit-Related Expectations Scale-P (PVRES-P) was administered to patients prior to the visit (version A) and version B – measuring actual experiences - after the visit at the GP. Doctors were administered the Patient Visit-Related Expectation Scale-D (PV-RE-D), where they provided answers based on evaluation of their older patients’ needs. The following types of psychosocial expectatons were taken into account: information giving, providing emotional support, building good rapport, promoting health and enhancing quality of life. Data regarding socioeconomic varables, health and the visit were also collected. Patient’s satisfaction was evaluated with the 7-item Satisfaction from the Visit Scale.
Results: The results show that between 27 and 41. 3% of patiens evaluated their experience during the visit as meeting their psychosocial expectations. Between 51. 1 and 62. 0% of patients declared, that their expectations were not addressed by physicians sufficiently, and for 5. 3 to 11. 0% their actual experience exceeded initial expectations. Conducted analyses revealed that physicians underestimated the expectations regarding health promotion and quality of life (45. 2 and 51. 8%, respectively). On the contrary, the expectations of emotional support and good rapport were overestimated by the doctors (53. 0 and 49. 1% respectively). Satisfaction from the visit was related to meeting the patients’ expectation – main effects were detected for majority of analysed types of expectations.
Audience Take Away: The presentation will help to understand what psychosocial expectations are important for older primary care patients and in what way they might affect medical care
- The audience will learn about biases in recognizing and addressing older patients’ psychosocial expectations..
- The role of promoting health and discussing quality of life issues for the process of healthy and successful aging will be highlighted.