Patient Agenda Setting and Clinic Efficiency in Outpatients

Respiratory Tract Diseases

Outpatient Clinics, Hospital, Humans, Outcome Assessment (Health Care), Patient Outcome Assessment, Patient satisfaction, Hospitalists, Secondary care

The purpose of the study is to determine whether patients who use a prompt sheet to identify their important issues before they see a doctor are more likely to feel that their important issues have been discussed during their consultation. The study will be conducted in a respiratory outpatient clinic.

Evidence suggests that most patients come to a consultation with issues they wish to raise, but they may not actually raise them and clinicians may not elicit them. This can adversely affect the consultation outcome, e.g. through misunderstandings, unwanted prescriptions, non-adherence and unnecessary follow-ups. In a review of methods used before consultations to help patients address their information needs Kinnersely et al. (2009) found that there were small but statistically significant increases in patient satisfaction and the number of questions patients asked, and no effect on consultation length. However, they identified several gaps in the evidence including the need to assess a wider range of outcome measures, to identify the impact of the methods on the types of questions asked and the need to measure consultation length accurately. This study aims to assess the impact of a written agenda form in a respiratory outpatient clinic. The form prompts the patient to identify their questions and issues, provides a list of frequently asked questions and invites the patient to write down the issues they wish to discuss with their doctor. We wish to identify whether use of the form increases the extent to which patients perceive that their important issues are discussed in the consultation. We will also assess whether patients feel more able to raise these issues and get the outcome they wanted, their confidence to manage their condition and consultation length. The study is a randomised controlled trial (RCT) with a sample size of 158 patients. On arrival at the clinic patients will be randomly allocated to either the intervention group (who will receive an agenda form) or to standard practice. Patient reported outcomes will be collected after the patient has seen the doctor and consultation times will be recorded by an independent observer outside the consultation room.

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United Kingdom