[Patient-medical staff-consultant triad: conditions for satisfaction in psychosomatic consultation service].

In a large 1000 bed University Medical Center the psychosomatic consultation service (PCS) was evaluated by a two step investigation. 1. Housemen (interns) and senior staff members were asked by questionnaires about their previous experiences with psychological medicine and particularly about their satisfaction with the PCS and how they would estimate the need for additional psychosomatic treatment for the patients on their ward. A striking disproportion was found between actual requests (1.8%) for PCS and the estimated need (18%) for additional psychosomatic advice or treatment. 2. Questionnaires dealing with satisfaction were given to the consultant, the patient and the consultee. The satisfaction of the consulte was mainly determined by the promptness in answering his request and formal aspects of the exchange, the patient satisfaction was mainly determined by the way they viewed the help, the sense of importance of the consultation and by the feeling of being understood by the consultant. This seems to influence the future compliance. Surprisingly, a correlation between the patient satisfaction with the consultation and the quantitative and qualitative aspects of exchange between consultant and consultee was less clearly demonstrated. This could be seen as a hint of communication problems between the consultee and his patient, the improvement of which is one of the main concerns of psychosomatic consultation.