Shortcoming of Measuring Patient Satisfaction’s Association With Anemia-Based Cardiovascular Risk in End-Stage Kidney Disease Patients

BACKGROUND: Patient-reported humanistic outcomes like patient satisfaction are becoming more important in clinical practice, but their use has limitations. Improvements are needed to better demonstrate how patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes are associated. The objective of the study was to observe the correlation between patient’s hemoglobin and patient satisfaction. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted at a University Hospital hemodialysis unit among end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients on maintenance hemodialysis in February and March, 2021. During this time period patient satisfaction was measured using an instrument from the Choices for Healthy Outcomes in Caring for End-Stage Renal Disease (CHOICE) study. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to find a correlation between patient satisfaction domains and hemoglobin. P value was set at 0.05, and SPSS version 26 was used for the analysis. RESULTS: Out of 41 patients studied, their satisfaction on care by interprofessional staff was 77.3%, information received was 68.8%, and effectiveness of care was 71.3% for “very good” and “excellent” responses combined. Out of 40 patients, hemoglobin levels were lower in 17 (42.5%) and higher in seven (17.5%) patients than the optimal range of 10 - 12 g/dL. Spearman’s correlation coefficients were not statistically significant for anemia and any patient satisfaction domain (r(s): 0.244, 0.101, 0.048, respectively for the three domains). Spearman’s correlation coefficients were high or moderate between patient satisfaction domains; interprofessional staff with information (r(s): 0.745, P value < 0.001) and interprofessional staff with the effectiveness of care (r(s): 0.619, P value < 0.001). Information domain had a moderate correlation with the effectiveness of care (r(s): 0.527, P value < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: No correlation was observed between patient satisfaction with hemoglobin. Although patient satisfaction among hemodialysis patients was mostly “very good” or “excellent”, nearly half of the patients were anemic, and some had higher hemoglobin than the target. Since both of these groups have higher cardiovascular risk this provides an opportunity for the development of patient satisfaction tools with greater sensitivity to awareness of patients’ cardiovascular risk.