Meeting patient's expectations in primary care consultations in Lithuania.

OBJECTIVE Patient satisfaction with health care services is considered an important factor of health care. Although research on patient satisfaction has become standard in Western Europe, in countries such as Lithuania the concept of patient satisfaction is still a relatively new one. This study aimed to investigate how the meeting of patients' expectations is related to increased satisfaction with medical consultation. STUDY DESIGN The methodology used by Williams et al. in the UK was applied to the Lithuanian health care setting. Forty physicians from 22 primary health care centres attending courses on general practice at Vilnius University were recruited for the study. Every third adult patient coming to a practice during a 5-day period was invited to participate in the study. In all, 609 patients coming to meet their physician regarding health problems were included in the study sample. The patients were asked to complete three standardized questionnaires: the Patient Intentions Questionnaire prior to the consultation, and the Expectations Met Questionnaire and Medical Interview Satisfaction Scale after the consultation. Cronbach's alpha statistic was used for the validation of the questionnaires and principal components analysis was used to determine the factors of patient expectations. RESULTS The response rate was 78%. ANALYSIS of 460 sets of questionnaires revealed that satisfaction with medical consultation is higher among patients who have a greater number of expectations met. Physicians' success in meeting different types of patient expectations also had different influences on patient satisfaction. The most important expectations to be met were "understanding and explanation", followed by expectations of "emotional support", while "getting information" was less important. CONCLUSIONS The most frequently reported expectations on the Patient Intentions Questionnaire were for "getting information" and "understanding and explanation" of the patients' health problem items, and the least mentioned were for emotional support items. Patients with more expectations met were found to have significantly higher scores on the satisfaction index. Satisfaction with the consultation is best predicted by meeting the patient's expectations for understanding and explanation, and for emotional support. Providing desired information to the patient as well as meeting the patient's expectations for diagnostic procedures and treatment is less associated with patient satisfaction.