Abstract
BackgroundNo study has assessed the association between patients’ and doctors’ gender and patient satisfaction with organizational aspects of health care in primary care. However, just like satisfaction regarding communication styles or technical skills, satisfaction towards organization of the general practitioner (GP) practice could also depend on doctors’ and/or patients’ gender. Different expectations between female and male patients regarding the organization of the practice or different ways of organizing care delivery between female and male GPs could act on this satisfaction. We aimed to compare female and male patients’ satisfaction towards their GP overall, and according to GPs’ gender.MethodsIn a cross-sectional study in Geneva, 23 randomly selected GPs (participation rate: 31 %) were asked to recruit up to 100 consecutive patients coming to the practice for a scheduled medical consultation. The patients completed an anonymous questionnaire about their satisfaction with their GP. Patient satisfaction was assessed using the six questions from the Europep questionnaire regarding organizational aspects of health care in terms of accessibility and availability, and presented in two different ways: % of patients very satisfied and mean score (SD). Multivariate analyses adjusting for patient and GP characteristics were conducted to compare outcomes between genders.ResultsOne thousand six hundred thirty-seven patients agreed to participate (participation rate: 97 %, women: 63 %, mean age: 54 years). The majority of patients were very satisfied (women 96.2 %, men 95.3 %, p = 0.38). Mean satisfaction scores were slightly higher in women (for overall satisfaction: women 4.7/5 (SD 0.6), men 4.6/5 (SD 0.6), p = 0.02) and in women visiting male GPs (women 4.6 (SD 0.6), men 4.5 (SD 0.6), p = 0.01), and the gender differences showed consistency across satisfaction items. These differences were small and no longer statistically significant in multivariate analyses.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that patients are highly satisfied with the organization of their GP’s practice, regardless of patients’ and GPs’ gender. As patients’ and GPs’ gender are known to influence patient satisfaction towards primary care delivery and as the current study is the first to explore this aspect in relation to organizational aspects of GP practice, further studies are needed in various primary care settings to confirm our results.
Highlights
No study has assessed the association between patients’ and doctors’ gender and patient satisfaction with organizational aspects of health care in primary care
A mailed survey carried out in a group-model HMO setting in northern California (USA) in 1995–96 which assessed various communication and technical skills showed that patients having chosen a general practitioner (GP) of the opposite gender tended to be more satisfied in general than those having chosen a GP of the same gender [12]
A sample of 75 GPs was randomly selected, without exclusion criteria, from the list of all GPs practising in the Geneva area and invited to participate by post, in order to include 25 GPs in the study
Summary
No study has assessed the association between patients’ and doctors’ gender and patient satisfaction with organizational aspects of health care in primary care. Female GPs tend to manage more female-specific and psychosocial problems, and they seem to communicate differently with their patients than their male counterparts, discussing social concerns and using shared decision-making style more often [4, 12]. They seem to spend more time with their patients than males [4, 12]. Female patients’ expectations seem to be higher regarding some issues, such as social problems, lifestyle and prevention, than their male counterparts [12]
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