Challenges to patient centredness – a comparison of patient and doctor experiences from primary care

BACKGROUND: We designed this observational study to investigate the level of patients’ and doctors’ ratings of patient-centred aspects of the primary care consultation. METHODS: Questionnaire study with patients and doctors. Consecutive patients in a primary care setting and 16 doctors responding post visit. Results are presented as proportions with 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: 411 questionnaires, 223 from patients and 188 from doctors, covered 251 consultations. Both patients and doctors gave the highest possible estimations on the aspects of patient-centred communication and satisfaction less frequently when the patient had other reasons for visit than purely somatic. Unlike the doctors’ estimations, the frequency of highest possible estimations in patient responses dropped if the patients had two to six reasons for visit rather than one. Among the six patient-centred aspects, both patients and doctors gave the highest possible estimation least frequently on the aspect of shared decision-making. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the nature of the reason, as well as the number of reasons for visit, interferes with the doctors’ level of patient-centred communication. Our results furthermore confirm the findings of previous studies that doctors insufficiently involve patients in their care. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12875-019-0959-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.