Patient satisfaction with healthcare in asthmatics and patients with COPD before and after patient education

Patient satisfaction with general practitioners (GP) and pulmonary outpatie nt clinics has not been previously compared in patients with asthma and chr onic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in addition to the effect of pati ent education on this satisfaction. We randomly allocated 78 asthmatics and 62 patients with COPD after ordinar y outpatient management to a control or an intervention group. Intervention consisted of educational group sessions and individual sessions administer ed by a trained nurse and physiotherapist. A self-management plan was devel oped. A patient satisfaction questionnaire was answered at baseline and at the 1-year follow-up. Before randomization, a higher proportion of asthmatics were satisfied with the overall handling of their disease by the outpatient clinic (86%) compa red with their GPs (72%, P=0.027, chi (2)-test). Equal and high proportions of patients with COPD were satisfied with both their GPs (85%) and the out patient clinic (87%) and in general seemed more satisfied with their GP tha n asthmatics (P=0.064). At the 1 year follow-up, 100% of the educated patie nts with COPD reported overall satisfaction with GPs compared with 78% in t he control group (P=0.023), but not for asthmatics (75 and 78%, respectivel y, P=0.581). We conclude that before being given education, asthmatics are more satisfie d with the pulmonary outpatient clinic than with GPs, regarding the overall handling of their disease. Patients with COPD seemed more satisfied with G Ps than asthmatics. For patients with COPD, patient education seemed to imp rove overall patient satisfaction with GPs, but this was not true for asthm atics. At baseline, overall satisfaction with the outpatient clinic was so beneficial that we had little chance of detecting any improvement.