Communication Skills of Physicians and Patients' Satisfaction

Background: The communication skills of physicians is an effective step of making effective relationship between doctor and patient. It plays essential role through diagnosis and treatment processes. This current study was performed to investigate the impact of communication skillfulness of physicians on patients' satisfaction.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was done to determine the impact of communication capability of practitioners on patients' satisfaction. The DiMatto's Patient Satisfaction Scale was administered among patients referring to the all 8 specialized clinics of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. The validity and reliability of Persian translation of questionnaire of DiMatto's Patient Satisfaction was verified by 10 specialists. The validity of the questionnaire was measured by content and structural analysis, and Cronbach's alpha coefficients. The data were analyzed by software package of SPSS version 16 using Pearson's correlation coefficient, U Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-wallis Test, Regression.

Results: The study showed that there was a significant correlation between patients' satisfaction and the communication skills of physicians (devoting the appropriate time for visiting the patients, explaining diagnosis and treatment procedures). In addition, the therapeutic skills of physicians, their friendly manners, respecting the patients' feelings, and careful examination of patients by physician, revealed a significant correlation with patient satisfaction (P <0.05). However, we did not find strong correlation between effective listening to patients and patient's satisfaction.

Conclusion: Communication skills of physician play an important role on patients' satisfaction; therefore, we propose strongly to improve the communication skills of physicians by improving the communication skills through related training courses.