Communication and empathy skills: Essential requisites for patient-centered radiology care.

PURPOSE

To investigate how patients value radiologists, using data from the Dutch healthcare assessment website.

METHOD

The Dutch healthcare assessment website was searched for patient reviews about radiologists in The Netherlands. The scores (scale of 1-10) assigned to the most recent review of each radiologist were extracted. All written reviews were assessed using standardized coding taxonomy, in the domains "clinical competencies" (including quality and safety of clinical care) and "relationships" (including communication with patients and humaneness/caring). For each category, it was assessed whether the review was positive or negative with regard to the performance of the radiologist.

RESULTS

217 of 941 radiologists (23 %) had been reviewed between 2017 and 2021. The total number of institutions to which these radiologists were affiliated was 75 (6 academic and 69 non-academic institutions). Median score assigned to each review was 9.6 (interquartile range 1.3, range 1-10). 74 of 217 radiologists (34 %) were given a maximum review score of 10. 29 of 217 radiologists (13 %) were given a review score of 5 or lower. The far majority of reviews concerned the categories communication (36 % of all positive patient reviews and 30 % of all negative patient reviews) and humaneness/caring (45 % of all positive patient reviews and 49 % of all negative patient reviews).

CONCLUSION

Radiologists are generally highly valued by patients, although there is room for improvement to decrease the number of negative patient experiences. Communication and empathy appear to be the most important skills on which radiologists are judged from a patient's perspective.