The disgruntled patient: how family practice residency programs handle requests for a physician change.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the alternatives available in family practice residency programs for handling patients who expressed dissatisfaction with their physician. Letters were sent to 150 family practice residency programs asking how they handled this problem. Of those who replied, it was determined that this problem is generally handled in one of three ways: (1) patient automatically transferred to another physician, (2) patient referred to original physician for discussion, or (3) patient referred to a designated authority. The rationale and implications of each method are discussed.