PATIENT SATISFACTION WITH A NURSE PRACTITIONER IN A UNIVERSITY EMERGENCY SERVICE

Study objective: To compare the overall satisfaction with emergency de partment care of patients seen by a nurse practitioner (NP) with that of patients seen in the usual fashion. Design: A case-control study co mparing responses by means of a five-point scale from a prospectively designed telephone survey. Setting: Midwestern urban university hospit al ED in which most patients are seen mainly by fourth-year medical st udents or house staff and all patients are seen and evaluated by the a ttending staff. Participants: Patients or, for children and incompeten t adults, the person who accompanied the patient to the ED. Results: O verall satisfaction was good for both groups of patients and was not s ignificantly different: 3.9 (SD, 1.1) for the NP group versus 4.0 (SD, 1.3) for the control group (P=.66 [NS]). Conclusion: This study suppo rts data from earlier studies suggesting that patients are satisfied w ith ambulatory care delivered by NPs.