Physician versus Patient Perception of Physician Hospital Discharge Communication: A Preliminary Study

Background: Physician discharge instructions are critical to patient care because they are the link transitioning the hospital care plan to the home. We hypothesize that physician perception of dis-charge instructions communication is better than patient perception. Objective: In a preliminary study, to compare patient and physician perception of communication at discharge. Design: Ob-servational, survey-based. Setting: 330-bed adult teaching hospital. Participants: Surveys were mailed to 100 patients discharged home and 49 internal medicine physicians responsible for those patients ’ care. Each physician had between 1 and 4 patients surveyed. Measurements: Pa-tients and physicians received anonymous 5-item questionnaires concerning physician communi-cation at discharge. Patient surveys inquired about their physicians ’ communication at the specific physician encounter, while physician surveys asked about the physicians ’ overall self-perception of discharge communication skills. Results: Completed questionnaires were returned by 59 pa-tients and 40 physicians. Physicians reported a noticeably better perception of communication than their patients regarding spending adequate time reviewing the discharge plan (83 % vs. 61%, P = 0.027), speaking slowly enough to understand (98 % vs. 80%, P = 0.013), using wording tha