Review articlePatient feedback questionnaires to enhance consultation skills of healthcare professionals: A systematic review
Introduction
Good consultation skills (CSs) are essential for effective patient encounters and it has been shown to drive positive outcomes including enhancing patient adherence and satisfaction [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]]. An emphasis was given by the British Medical Association (BMA) and the General Medical Council (GMC) indicating the importance for the quality of the physician’s professional work to be assessed at regular intervals, by patients and colleagues [7], thus supporting their continuous professional development [[8], [9]]. Numerous methods are described in the literature regarding the assessment of practitioners’ consultations skills, including assessments conducted by assessors [10], peers [[11], [12], [13]], or by patients [[14], [15], [16], [17]]. A combination of methods are suggested to provide a more holistic assessment [[18], [19], [20]]. However, collecting feedback from patients is probably the most suitable method [21]. Patients, as customers of the healthcare system are capable of highlighting weak areas of performance that are not usually covered by other conventional methods [[6], [22]], or not recognised by practitioners themselves [23].
Patient feedback can be collected using questionnaires and/or by conducting interviews [[24], [25]]. However, the full benefit of feedback can only be realised by using it to support professionals’ development. It can help practitioners to better understand their skills, acknowledge their strengths, identify areas needing further attention, and thus directing them to where improvements are needed [[26], [27], [28]].
Using feedback collected from patients to enhance the CSs of individual practitioners is not thoroughly studied. Initial searches identified two systematic reviews that investigated this domain [[29], [30]]. While these reviews identified several feedback questionnaires, they were focused on assessing CSs of physicians. However, patient consultations are currently conducted by a wide variety of different practitioners and not only by physicians. For example, in the UK since 2005, several practitioners are legally allowed to prescribe medications to patients, including nurses and pharmacists [[31], [32], [33]], thus the number of patient consultations has greatly increased. Therefore, this systematic review was conducted to identify patient feedback questionnaires used to assess and enhance the development of individual CSs of all practitioners across all settings.
This review aimed to identify and describe patient feedback questionnaires that assess the development of CSs of individual practitioners. The objectives were to describe identified studies and questionnaires according to the following: (a) name of the questionnaire, (b) practitioners assessed, (c) assessment setting, (d) questionnaire administration method (patient recruitment, individual in charge of administration, and concealment methods), (e) patient feedback reporting methods, (f) follow up to patient feedback and its impact.
Section snippets
Literature search
A systematic search was conducted to identify relevant studies using the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED (via Ebsco), Web of Science, SCOPUS, CINAHL, and PsycInfo, from inception of the databases up to January 2017. A protocol was developed and registered on the international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews (PROSPERO) (CRD42017055365). Search results were limited by two filters: English language and publication type: journal, and they were exported into the
Results
The search process is presented in the PRISMA flow diagram in Fig. 1. A total of sixteen studies were included in the review.
Summary of main results
To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review that identified patient feedback questionnaires assessing CSs of all practitioners in all settings. Sixteen studies were identified. The majority of studies were similar in terms of their design, setting, methods of patient recruitment and feedback reporting to practitioners. Results were generally positive, however, they were mostly reflecting the views of practitioners regarding feedback process, without actually measuring the extent of
Conflict of interest
None
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Author contributions
HA, MT and JD contributed to the design of the review. HA and SS assessed the quality of included studies. HA drafted the manuscript and all authors revised and approved its final version.
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