Patients' satisfaction with outpatient psychiatric care

The purpose of this study was to describe patient satisfaction with outpatient psychiatric care in two community care clinics in Finland. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 300 outpatients between February and March 2000. A total of 171 patients returned completed questionnaires (response rate 57%). The data analysis was based on descriptive statistics, chi-square test, the Mann-Whitney U-test and the Kruskal-Wallis test. Item homogeneity was analysed using Cronbach alpha coefficient. The results showed that patient satisfaction was highest in areas pertaining to staff and care discussions, and lowest in areas pertaining to information. Patients who considered the wait for treatment to be too long were more dissatisfied with staff, their chance of influencing their own care, and the help they received, compared with patients who considered the wait to be reasonable in length. We can conclude that although patients are quite satisfied with their outpatient treatment in general, the patient information process is not at a satisfactory level at outpatient psychiatric clinics. In the future, more emphasis should be put on developing more innovative methods to increase psychiatric patients' knowledge level regarding their own illness and treatment.