Evaluation of Patients’ Satisfaction from Patient-Physician Communication and Factors Influencing It among Outpatients of Tehran’ Hospitals

Physician- patient communication is essential for good medical practice and leads to patient satisfaction and subsequent following of prescribed therapeutics and health promotion. There is limited study on this subject in Iran. The purpose of this study was to evaluate patients' satisfaction of the physician-patient communication and factors influencing it to provide useful information for decision-makers within the health services. This research was an applied field cross-sectional study among hospitals in Tehran. Satisfaction was assessed by 22 questions after obtaining consent from the patients. The level of patient's satisfaction with physician's communication among 1200 patients in order of priority was: medium 63.4%, high 15.1%, low 14.4%, very high 4.7%, and very low 2.5%. Mean patients’ satisfaction was 76.35±13.99, maximum and minimum satisfaction was 110 and 30, respectively. There was a significant relationship between patient satisfaction and patients’ gender, age, marital status, occupation, physicians’ age, sex and timely presence of the physician in the clinic and good deal of communication between patient and physician’s receptionist. Overall patient satisfaction with the patient -physician communication is medium that is not desirable. Factors such as gender, age, material status, and occupation of patients and age and sex of physician, timely presence of the physician in the clinic and a good deal of communication between patient and physician receptionist had a positive correlation with patient's satisfaction. According to important role of communications’ skills in patients’ satisfaction, it is necessary to put more emphasis on training and assessment of communication skills of physicians and health care personnel.