[A German Survey of Goal Setting and Goal Agreement in Medical Rehabilitation]. / Reha-Zielvereinbarungen in der medizinischen Rehabilitation: eine bundesweite Bestandsaufnahme.

AIM: To describe the current practice of goal setting and goal agreement in the Medical rehabilitation in Germany. METHODOLOGY: Rehabilitation centers contracted by the German Pension Insurance and covering all indications were approached by a questionnaire survey. RESULTS: The percentage of questionnaires returned was 48.1% (N=716). 93.3% of the responders replied that the importance placed on "rehab goals" at their institution was "very high" (41.1%) or "quite high" (52.2%). Our findings, however, reveal the potential for improving the quality of setting rehab goals in the fields of "process orientation", "team orientation" and "patient orientation". CONCLUSION: Rehabilitation centers perceive current practice in goal setting and goal agreement as being on a high level. The rehabilitation centers name many positive aspects as well as barriers to goal setting. Those problems should be more frequently addressed in practice.

[The relevance of internal and external participation for patient satisfaction]. / Die Bedeutung der internen und externen Partizipation für die Patientenzufriedenheit.

AIM OF THE STUDY: Patient satisfaction is an essential quality and outcome criteria for patient-centered treatment of chronic diseases. For successful implementation of integrated patient-centered care it is important to take the needs and expectations of the patients into consideration in the treatment process and to involve them in decision-making (external participation), as well as establishing patient-centered collaboration within the team and organization (internal participation). This study examines in what respect patient satisfaction can be predicted through parameters that focus on the personal needs of the individual or internal and external participation. METHODS: To this end we used a multicenter cross-sectional study to collect evaluations from N=329 patients with different chronic diseases in 11 rehabilitation clinics. Patient satisfaction (ZUF-8) served as the criterion, and the predictors were external participation (PEF-FB-9), satisfaction with decision-making (Man-Son-Hing Scale) and internal participation (Internal Participation Scale), socio-demographic factors and rehabilitation status (IRES-24). The data were analyzed statistically using multiple linear regression. RESULTS: A high degree of variance of patient satisfaction could be explained by the parameters applied (Goodness-of-fit: R²corrected=47.3%). The strongest predictors of satisfaction were internal participation (Beta=0.44, p<0.001) and satisfaction with the decision-making (Beta=0.36, p<0.001). CONCLUSION: The study provides initial indications of the positive effects of internal and external participation. Further studies are necessary to substantiate the connection between internal and external participation and patient satisfaction.