Examination of opinions of patients regarding physicians and medical care after withdrawal of community hospital internists / 日本プライマリ・ケア連合学会誌

ABSTRACT

Introduction <br>This study aims to clarify how patients and local residents regard physicians and medical care in light of the ongoing nationwide tendency of internists to unexpectedly abandon their posts in local community hospitals. <br>Methods <br>The subjects of this study were citizens who chose to continue visiting a community hospital in X City after some of its internists recently left their posts in order to return to their previous hospitals. A questionnaire survey was conducted by focus-group interviews of two patient groups. <br>Results <br>Three hundred and ninety-nine responses were judged valid. The causative factors cited by the respondents for the internists’ abandonment of their jobs were the college or university system (81%), the national institutions (79%), and the nation’ s hospital system (72%). Eighty-eight percent of the respondents observed that internists had done the best they could, while 88% pointed out that internists could not avoid changing their workplaces, 96% wanted internists to exert their utmost efforts for their patients, and 85% found internists trustworthy. <br>Conclusions <br>Patients affected by internists' job changes were actually inconvenienced by these, and considered it a matter of course that the results should have meant some loss of freedom for themselves. Moreover, it was suggested that that the physicians had lost their trust in the medical organizations, and the patients were left with very mixed emotions about the physicians. Many patients considered that the practice of medicine is a vocation, and, even though they experienced the physicians' withdrawals from their posts, they still expected a humane attitude in the doctors and communication with them, and they trusted them. However, there were some patients who regarded medicine as a service industry, so that it was suggested that there may be a change in the nature of the trust that patients have in doctors.