Perspectives of Ophthalmologists on Managing Patient Expectations and Improving Patient Satisfaction

Purpose: To achieve a high level of patient satisfaction, physicians need to identify and address patients' expectations. However, ophthalmologists' attitudes and behavior with respect to patient expectations and satisfaction are not well understood. Therefore, we undertook a study to examine ophthalmologists' attitudes, performance and major determinants of their behavior with respect to managing patient expectations in different settings: public hospitals and private clinics. Methods: The authors refined a previously validated questionnaire to assess ophthalmologists' attitudes and performance with respect to patient expectations and patient satisfaction in public hospitals and private clinics. The authors surveyed ophthalmologists at the Annual Conference of Ocular Microsurgery in Israel. Results: Overall, 164 ophthalmologists completed the survey (65.6% response rate), of which 24 (14.6%) were residents and 140 (85.4%) were attendings. Although all the ophthalmologists working at public hospitals believed that it is important to be attentive to patient expectations, only 41.2% reported that they sometimes or always inquire about their patients’ expectations; only 2% always asked patients about their expectations. Residents at public hospitals were more likely to ask than attendings (95.8% vs. 29.0%, p