A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON PATIENT PRIORITIES FOR GENERAL-PRACTICE CARE - PART 1 - DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH DOMAIN

To make health care more responsive to patient needs, insight into pat ient priorities is needed. A systematic literature review, using elect ronic and manual searches, was made of studies on patient priorities w ith regard to primary health care. Data-extraction was performed by tw o researchers, followed by systematic analyses of study features. 57 s tudies were included. The aspects of care and methods used showed a wi de variation. Aspects most often included were ''informativeness'', '' humaneness'' acid ''competence/accuracy''. Based on an analysis of 19 studies, the following aspects were seen by patients as most important in more than 50% of the studies that included them: ''humaneness'', ' 'competence/accuracy'', ''patients' involvement in decisions'', ''time for care'', ''other aspects of availability/accessibility'', ''inform ativeness'', ''exploring patients' needs'', ''other aspects of relatio n and communication'' and ''availability of special services''. (C) 19 98 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.