Measuring Responsiveness in the Therapeutic Relationship: A Patient Perspective

Abstract

This article reports results from a three-country study of patient perceptions of physician responsiveness. Based on existing research in the medical and social-psychological literatures, we theorized that patients' perceptions of physician responsiveness to their needs would be an important component of the patient–physician relationship and that this construct could be distinguished reliably from more global assessments of patient satisfaction. We then developed a new measure designed to assess these perceptions from the patients' point of view. This measure was administered to large samples of patients in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Results supported our hypotheses. Patient perception of physician responsiveness significantly predicted both patient satisfaction and subjective health-related problems, over and above effects attributable to general satisfaction. We also noted the absence of significant differences across the three cultures or sex, suggesting that the process we identify has considerable generality. We also describe a short version of our measure that researchers may find useful in a variety of research or clinical settings.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, who brought us together. We are also grateful to the patients who completed our questionnaires and in the United Kingdom to Dr. Bradley and partners, Dr. Michael Dixon and partners, and Dr. Philip Evans and partners who, with their staff, supported this work. In the United States, we thank Cleveland Shields, Ph.D., Sally Rousseau, and Deborah Eldredge, Ph.D., R.N., for their assistance in the pilot studies. In Canada, we acknowledge the assistance of the Telephone Survey Unit of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, The University of Western Ontario.

Notes

Note. Extraction: Principal components with varimax rotation.

^a Items included in the reduced set of Patient Perceptions of Physician Responsiveness scale items.

Note. PR = Patient Perceptions of Physician Responsiveness. ∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .01.