WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN PSYCHIATRIC OUTPATIENT CARE - QUALITY OF CARE FROM THE PATIENTS PERSPECTIVE

The development of quality assurance programmes for psychiatric care h as increased the interest in quality of care and accountability from t he patient's perspective, The aims of this study were threefold, First , to map descriptive characteristics of ideal outpatient psychiatric c are through open-ended patient interviews, using a sample of 94 psychi atric outpatients, second, to have another sample of 84 outpatients ra nk the importance of 57 treatment characteristics extracted from the q ualitative analysis of the interviews, and third to make comparisons w ith a previously performed investigation on quality of care of psychia tric inpatients, Results of the content analysis showed that character istics of ideal outpatient treatment could be classified in eight cont ent categories: accessibility of care, treatment content, staff-patien t relationship, continuity of care, staff's professionalism, patient i nformation/co-influence, treatment environment and cost of care. Resul ts from the patients' rating of the importance of treatment characteri stics showed that patients put the highest emphasis on staff's empathe tic qualities in being interested, understanding, listening and respec ting patients, Comparisons with the previously studied inpatient sampl e, showed great similarities in what was considered important to reach a satisfactory care situation, It is concluded that in order to secur e content validity of investigations of the quality of psychiatric car e from the patient's perspective, effort should be put into including the areas of staff-patient relationship and patient information and co -influence.