Patient Expectations of General Practitioner Care

Objective: To explore patient expectations of general practitioner care along with assessment of their satisfaction with various services provided in the primary health care centre. Design: Qualitative and quantitative methods. Former included a focus group discussion and later questionnaire survey. Results: There was overall satisfaction with the general practitioner care although dissatisfaction was expressed with few components of the services provided by the health centre. All the respondents unanimously agreed that good doctor patient relationship is very important for the satisfaction of the patients. They were of the opinion that the doctors should be communicative, compassionate and should attend to psychological and contextual determinants of the illness in addition to biomedical aspects. Conclusion: Exploring patient expectations is very important for ensuring health care of the highest quality. There is a magical increase in the expectations of the patients and a wide gap exists between patient expectations and general practitioner perceptions of medical care. Therefore, to ensure good general practitioner care, a satisfactory balance should be achieved between patient expectations, general practitioner perceptions and priorities set by health care planners.