Progression of Emergency Medicine Resident Patient Experience Scores by Level of Training

BACKGROUND: Patient satisfaction surveys are vital to measuring a patient’s experience of care. How scores of patients managed by emergency medicine (EM) residents change as residents progress through training is not known. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether EM residents’ patient satisfaction scores improve as residency training progresses, similar to clinical skill improvement. METHODS: A retrospective cross-sectional study evaluated the correlation of patient satisfaction scores with EM resident year of training from 2015 through 2017. We evaluated for a change in score over time for the 4 “physician questions” and the “overall” score. RESULTS: We evaluated 1684 Press Ganey surveys linked to 40 EM resident physicians during the study period. The mean top box scores for the 4 physician questions (concern for comfort [P = .72], courtesy [P = .55], informative about treatment [P = .46], and listening [P = .91]) and overall assessment of emergency department care (P = .51) were not significantly improved over the course of resident. CONCLUSION: We did not observe a difference in EM residents’ patient experience scores as their level of training progressed. Comprehensive patient experience training for residents might be needed.