Study on the content and structure of the contracted residents′ psychological contracts by family doctors / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To describe the content and analyze the constitutive dimensions of the psychological contracts with residents contracted for family physician services.Methods:Based on a collection of policy documents on family doctor contracting services issued by central government ministries and relevant departments in Shandong province as well as 27 signed family doctor agreements in nine counties (cities, districts) of Shandong province, semi-structured interviews were made to 48 residents in both September 2019-January 2020 period and May-June 2020 period, regarding the verbal promises of family doctors and the needs of these contracted residents. Then the documented and non-documented commitments of the family doctors were extracted in the content analysis method, and a credibility test was made using the Myers reliability test formula.Results:A total of 639 written commitments of family doctors were obtained, covering 5 types of responsibilities and 20 commitments, and the credibility coefficient was 0.88. 322 codes of non-documented commitments were obtained, 4 commitments were added on the basis of documented commitments, and the credibility coefficient was 0.90. The psychological contracts were sorted out in such five areas as technical quality responsibility, cost control responsibility, convenient access responsibility, communication responsibility, and empathic responsibility, by matching the residents′ medical service needs obtained from the interviews, while the first three categories and the last two categories were classified as transactional and relational psychological contracts, respectively, with 10 items of technical quality responsibility accounting for the highest percentage (41.67%).Conclusions:The documented and non-documented commitments of family doctors differed in content and structure. The psychological contract signed by residents was mainly transactional, and residents had higher expectations for family doctors to provide high-quality, convenient and economical services.