• Lucas Wollmann, Lisiane Hauser, Christina van der Feltz-Cornelis, Sotero Serrate Mengue, Rudi Roman, RechMilena Rodrigues AgostinhoMRADepartment of Medicine University of Caxias do Sul, R. Francisco Getúlio Vargas, 1130, Caxias do Sul, 95070560, Brazil., and Erno Harzheim.
• Conceição Hospital Group, Primary Health Care Management, Av. Francisco Trein, 596, Porto Alegre, 91350200, Brazil.
• Fam Pract. 2024 Nov 27.

BackgroundThe quality of the doctor-patient relationship plays a crucial role in patients' experiences with healthcare services, positively influencing clinical outcomes and satisfaction with care. The Patient-Doctor Relationship Questionnaire (PDRQ-9) is widely used to assess this relationship. However, there are no quality categories that can be derived from the instrument's score to facilitate understanding and decision-making.ObjectivesThis study aims to establish categories of the quality of the relationship based on the PDRQ-9 score.MethodsA latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted using interviews with 6160 users of primary health care units throughout Brazil to define different homogeneous response profiles. The Youden index was used to determine the cut point between classes.ResultsLCA identified the presence of two response profiles, one associated with a high evaluation of the quality of the doctor-patient relationship and another associated with a moderate evaluation. The cut point between classes, established through the Youden index, was 3.5 (on a possible score range of 1-5) or 31 (on a possible score range of 9-45). The cut point demonstrated high accuracy (0.94), sensitivity (0.96), and specificity (0.98).ConclusionsThe categorization proposed in this study enhances the interpretability of PDRQ-9 results, providing a practical framework for assessing the quality of the doctor-patient relationship. By establishing actionable quality categories, this tool could support targeted interventions, such as performance feedback and training, aimed at fostering empathy, communication, and trust in healthcare settings.© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

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