A participatory approach to understanding and measuring patient satisfaction in a primary care teaching setting.

Background: Patient satisfaction is a complex, multidimensional concept that is difficult to measure. However, there is agreement that understanding the expectations of a patient community or "what is important to them" is an essential consideration. We chose a participatory approach to address patient satisfaction in the context of a primary care teaching clinic.

Detecting and addressing adolescent issues and concerns: evaluating the efficacy of a primary care previsit questionnaire.

Objective: To assess the efficacy of a previsit questionnaire (PVQ), implemented without formal training, that was designed to screen for biomedical and psychosocial health issues and concerns among adolescent patients in a hospital-based primary care clinic, and to examine the subsequent action taken for health issues and concerns identified with the PVQ.

Design: Retrospective review of adolescent medical charts, using a pre-post design.

Setting: An outpatient primary care clinic located in an urban teaching hospital in Montreal, Que.