Effect of patient completed agenda forms and doctors' education about the agenda on the outcome of consultations: randomised controlled trial

J F Middleton,C L Gillies,R K Mckinley

doi:10.1136/bmj.38841.444861.7c

Abstract

Objective To assess the effect of patient completed agenda forms for the consultation and doctors' education on identifying patients' agendas on the outcome of consultations.Design Randomised controlled trial.Setting General practices...

Highlights

The consultation between a doctor and patient is the core activity of clinical practice.[1]
One of us previously developed a patient agenda form, to be completed by patients before they consulted with their doctor.[19]
We examined the effect of the patients’ agenda form and educating general practitioners on identifying the patients’ agenda on the outcome of consultations

Summary

Introduction

The consultation between a doctor and patient is the core activity of clinical practice.[1]. Educational interventions have been shown to have beneficial effects on the observed behaviours of doctors[8,9,10,11] few have been shown to improve the outcome of consultations with real patients.[12] Enhancement of patients’ ability to participate in the consultation improves communication between the doctor and patient[13 14] and patient outcomes.[13,14,15,16,17] These studies have used information packages and workshops to develop patient skills that are either condition specific or difficult to disseminate widely. McCann piloted a similar intervention, which prolonged consultations, but despite patients asking more questions outcomes from the consultation were unchanged.[20] A second pilot study suggested that educating doctors about patients’ agendas reduced the time required to manage each problem.[21]

Methods

Results

Conclusion