Patient Satisfaction as Perceived by Nurse Practitioner Communication

The Nurse Practitioner's (NP's) role as primary healthcare provider has become more prevalent in the last decade due in part to the shortage of primary care providers. NP's in the past have been associated with delivering cost-effective, professional, caring, and competent healthcare. Research studies documenting high patient satisfaction with NP care, contribute to the body of data evaluating their performance. In this study, the authors chose to explore NP communication and its influence on patient satisfaction with the care provided. The research question asked: In a low social economic population is there a relationship between age, education, and the patient's own perception of health and their satisfaction with are received from a NP at a Midwestern academic health center? We hypothesized that younger patients, those with higher educations, and those patients who perceive their own health status as good would be more satisfied with the care provided by NP's. How the patient viewed the NP's communication skills was selected as the indication of patient satisfaction, along with a global rating for the NP. A random sample of 300 patients, which were seen by two of the NPs at a Midwest academic health center from July 2007 to July 2008 were mailed the Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems (CAHPS) survey, along with a consent form. These patients were at 175% poverty level or less and belonged to the county health plan. They ranged in age from 19 to 64 years of age. Ninety seven (32.3%) of those 300 patients responded and were included in the study. In this study, the researchers determined that all ratings on all survey questions regarding how well the nurse practitioner (NP) communicated were high. These ratings included perceptions of how understandable the nurse practitioner’s explanations were, how carefully the NP listened, how familiar the NP was with the patient’s medical history, and how often did the NP show respect and spend sufficient time during the appointment. Similar to previous research on NP satisfaction in other types of settings patients who are underserved and uninsured also reported high satisfaction with this type of health care provider. The researchers used Pearson’s Correlation coefficient to show if there was a connection between how the Nurse Practitioner communicates and the patient’s age, education, and the patient’s own perception of their health status. We found that older patients were more satisfied with the care they received. As for education, our research did not support our hypothesis that those with a higher degree of education would be more satisfied with NP care. We also found that the ratings of satisfaction were uniformly high across all levels of perceived health status. Recent literature has supported that patient’s have found NP care to be of high quality. Brown (2007) found that patient’s felt comfortable with nurses providing medical care and helps to confirm that NP’s are a valuable part of the healthcare delivery process.Master'sSchool of Health Professions and Studies: NursingUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117978/1/Bowman.pd