Access, waiting times, a lack of interpersonal continuity, short consultations, and poor attitude of doctors were commonly cited as problems.
Improving interpersonal communication during consultation, multidisciplinary handovers or multidisciplinary meetings may help.
In this respect, we feel the present study has been successful, and the fact that the key interpersonal aspects of the consultations identified matched the items contained in the CARE Measure paves the way for further work on translation of the CARE measure into Chinese and validation studies.
The assessments consisted of a question form with three separate questions: "How do you judge the biomedical / psychosocial / interpersonal quality of this consultation?".
For all items relating to interpersonal aspects of the consultation, higher patient ratings were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting confidence and trust.
Interpersonal aspects of the consultation rated in the survey were strongly associated with reported confidence and trust in the doctor, the strongest association being 'taking your problems seriously'.
This study adds depth by considering the effect of age, gender and ethnicity on the relationship between interpersonal aspects of the consultation and patients' trust.
We used binary logistic regression analysis to investigate patients' reported confidence and trust in the GP, analysing ratings of 7 interpersonal aspects of the consultation, controlling for patients' sociodemographic characteristics.
Initially, a 'main effects' model was used to determine the effects (ORs) associated with the patient's age, gender, ethnicity and the seven ratings of interpersonal aspects of the consultation.
We have shown that the interpersonal aspects of the consultation rated in the survey were strongly associated with reported confidence and trust in the doctor, the strongest association being 'taking your problems seriously'.
