Seniors' perceptions of their medical care. Before admission to a geriatric rehabilitation program.
OBJECTIVE
To review older patients' perceptions of their medical care before hospital admission and to determine whether there are common perceptions family physicians should address after discharge.


METHODS
Semistructured interviews with qualitative analysis.


METHODS
Inpatient geriatric rehabilitation and assessment unit.


METHODS
Community-living seniors admitted from home or transferred from acute care hospitals.


METHODS
Consecutively admitted patients were interviewed within a week of admission. Participants were asked open-ended and Likert-type questions. Responses were analyzed to uncover recurrent themes and descriptive statistics.


RESULTS
Patients thought physicians' personalities and ability to communicate were important factors in their satisfaction with care received. Loyalty to a physician was an important theme and might have made patients minimize their concerns about care. Most patients were confident in being discharged back into the care of their family physicians.


CONCLUSIONS
Physicians' personalities and communication skills affected whether patients were satisfied with care. Older patients are loyal to their family physicians; they did not identify any issues for family physicians to address with them after discharge.
Frank
Christopher
C
Department of Family Medicine, Queen's University, Kingston, Ont. frankc@pccchealth.org
Su
Charles
C
Knott
T Christine
TC
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003142:Communication; D005194:Family Practice; D005260:Female; D005853:Geriatrics; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010343:Patient Admission; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010551:Personality; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011361:Professional Competence; D012047:Rehabilitation Centers