Frequency of Difficult Patient Encounters in a Japanese University Hospital and Community Hospitals: A Cross-sectional Study

Objective Difficult patient encounters (DPEs) are defined as encounters with patients causing strong negative feelings in physicians. In primary care settings, DPEs account for approximately 15% of visits among outpatients. To our knowledge, this is the first epidemiological study of DPEs in Japan. Methods We conducted a survey of 8 physicians (5.0±2 years of clinical experience) who examined first-visit patients ≥15 years old with clinical symptoms at the Department of General Medicine in Chiba University Hospital and 4 community hospitals over a 2-month period since December 2015. Materials We evaluated 10-Item Difficult Doctor-Patient Relationship Questionnaire (DDPRQ-10) scores (DPE ≥31 points; non-DPE ≤30 points) and patient age, sex, and presence of psychological or social problems. Results The valid response rate was 98.9% (94/95) and 98.4% (189/192) in the university and community hospitals, respectively. The percentage of DPEs was 39.8% (37/93) and 15.0% (26/173) in the university and community hospitals, respectively; the percentage of DPEs was significantly higher at the university hospital than at the community hospitals (p<0.001). The proportion of patients with psychosocial problems was significantly higher in the DPE group than in the non-DPE group (93.7% vs. 40.4%, p<0.001). Conclusion Our findings were similar to those reported in primary care settings in other countries in community hospital outpatient and general internal medicine departments, where patients are mostly non-referrals, although the values were higher in university hospital general medicine departments, where patients were mostly referrals. Patients involved in DPEs have a high rate of psychological and social problems.