(College Station)—Research by two Texas A&M University marketing professors shows that applying well-accepted principles for achieving customer satisfaction to doctor-patient interactions could improve the way America trains its doctors.
"Our research supports previous work focusing on specific physician behaviors that drive patient satisfaction," said Leonard Berry, Mays Business School distinguished professor of marketing and holder of the M.B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership.
"If we can draw a profile of the way the ideal doctor behaves, we could use that image as a training platform and an assessment model for physicians, perhaps even as a tool to help decide who gets admitted to medical school," he said.
Berry, who also holds a joint appointment as professor of humanities in medicine at the Texas A&M Health Science Center, teamed with fellow marketing professor Janet Turner Parish and former Mays faculty member Neeli Bendapudi (now at Ohio State) to survey 192 Mayo Clinic patients about what they liked and didn't like about their doctors.
Their results are published in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings as "Patients' Perspectives on Ideal Physician Behaviors," co-authored with Mayo Clinic physician Keith Frey and William Rayburn of Scott & White Clinic.
Not surprisingly, those surveyed wanted their doctors to display empathy and compassion while showing them respect and allowing them to preserve their dignity.
"Medical services are different, more personal and more important than most other services" Berry said.
"Medical 'customers' are inherently under stress, and the highly complex and technical nature of medical services puts them at a considerable knowledge disadvantage. How doctors provide services, their behavior when doing so, is not only very important to patients, but it is easier for them to judge. Because patients may lack the skills to evaluate technical procedures, they become 'detectives,' looking for 'clues' to reassure themselves of their caregiver's competence and caring.
"Patients need to trust their doctors to do the right thing in the right way, but certain physician behaviors are more conducive than others to building such trust. Although it's vital that a doctor be technically competent, he or she also must learn and demonstrate interpersonal skills, treating patients with a personal touch while projecting confidence, empathy, humaneness, forthrightness, respect and thoroughness."
The 192 patients included in the survey were randomly selected from a cross-section of Mayo Clinic patients in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Rochester, Minnesota. Respondents were asked to describe in detail their best and worst experiences with doctors at the clinics and to name one change they would make to their experience there.
All 192 patients had a story about a "best" experience, but only 89 provided a "worst" story. Berry and his co-authors reviewed the transcripts of these stories and analyzed them for common themes and for lessons that could be used to improve clinic operations, as well as having ramifications for improving physician education in patient relations.
"Patient feedback can clarify which physician behaviors have the greatest impact on patient satisfaction," Berry said.
He and his co-authors end their journal article by quoting a Mayo Clinic patient with breast cancer, who said, "We want doctors who can empathize and understand our needs as a whole person. We put doctors on a pedestal right next to God, yet we don't want them to act superior, belittle us, or intimidate us ... We would like to think that we're not just a tumor, not just a breast, not just a victim. Surely, if they know us, they would love us."
Berry refers to research showing it's not surprising that strong doctor-patient relationships assume even greater importance during periods of serious illness and adds, "The quality of a patient's relationship with his or her doctor can affect not only that patient's emotional well-being but also may make a different in how well the patient follows doctors' orders and thus when or even whether the patient recovers."
He emphasized that the study reveals the importance of paying attention to patient satisfaction.
"Most service organizations invest in developing the interpersonal skills of their employees who interact with customers. It's hard to image a service in which such skills are more important than in medicine," he said.