Healthcare Areas

In surveys conducted between October 2018 to March 2023, Health Quality Alberta asked patients, “how would you rate the way your primary care provider listened to you in your most recent visit?”

Patients could choose “excellent / very good / good / fair / poor”.

Patient experience is likely better if patients feel the reason for their visit is addressed and they are able to share what is important to them with appropriate acknowledgement from their care provider in return. For example, it is common for patients to have more than one issue to discuss at their appointment. Asking inviting questions and paraphrasing can be great ways to ensure patients feel listened to. Likewise, so is removing all signs or messaging relating to one issue per visit.

There are a number of factors that primary care providers’ offices can consider if looking to improve experiences with providers’ listening to their patients. Some questions they could ask include:

• What processes are in place to learn what the patient wants to talk about during their visit?
• Does the provider start by asking patients what they would like to address during this visit? A common strategy is to “wait till eight.” Eight seconds is a common amount of time to wait for a response after asking a question.
• Are patients interrupted when they are speaking?
• Does the patient have the ability to bring up other things that are important to them even if they are outside the main reason for the visit?
• Are patients encouraged to write down what they hope to cover during the visit? Some patients might benefit from jotting their thoughts down in advance.

For information about Health Quality Alberta’s patient experience surveys offered to individual clinics in Alberta, please visit Health Quality Alberta’s website.