• Bianca Cannon and Timothy P Usherwood.
• Department of General Practice, University of Sydney, Westmead Hospital, New South Wales, Australia. biancac@med.usyd.edu.au
• Aust Fam Physician. 2007 Mar 1;36(3):185-6, 192.

BackgroundWhile patient satisfaction with the general practice consultation has been extensively researched, there have been relatively few studies of doctors' perception of patient satisfaction. This study sought to measure how accurately doctors are able to predict patient satisfaction with consultations in general practice.MethodsAdult patients consulting about new episodes of illness in general practice completed a consultation satisfaction questionnaire. The scores from the questionnaire were compared with doctors' predictions of patient satisfaction.ResultsNine general practitioners completed the study and returned a total of 167 pairs of questionnaires. On average, the patients gave their doctors higher scores on the general satisfaction and professional care scales than on the depth of relationship and perceived time scales of the questionnaire. On every scale, patients reported higher levels of satisfaction than their doctors predicted they would. There was poor correlation between patient and doctor scores for the perceived time scale, but moderate correlation for the other three scales.DiscussionOur findings suggest that a doctor's sense that a patient was not satisfied following a consultation may be valid, but that doctors may underestimate their patients' satisfaction.

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