Videotaping of general practice consultations: effect on patient satisfaction

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Abstract
Methods and results Eighteen general practitioner trainers participated in the study. Each used two consulting sessions for the study. One was videotaped after obtaining appropriate consent, the other was not. After each consultation patients were asked to complete a validated and reliable satisfaction questionnaire.5 They were assured of anonymity, and they completed the questionnaires in the waiting room after the consultation. From work in a similar patient population we calculated that 100 patients per group would have a power of 90% to detect differences in satisfaction as small as 5% between the groups. The results were analysed with SPSS-X. They were normally distributed, and variances were homogeneous with Bartlett's test. Data were compared by Student's t test. A total of 379 questionnaires were returned, 182 from the videotaped group and 197 from the group that was not videotaped. The groups were well matched for age and sex. Eighteen (9%) patients withheld consent to videotaping. The findings are shown in the table. We found no significant differences in overall satisfaction or in any of the subscales. Analysis by individual practices showed no significant differences in patient satisfaction between those whose consultations had been videotaped and those whose consultations had not, for any doctor. View this table: In this window In a new window Patient satisfaction scores after videotaping of consultations. Values are means (SD)