Patients awareness of their medical conditions in multi-specialty outpatient clinics in Saudi Arabia

OBJECTIVE: To assess the patients awareness of their medical conditions, identify the factors affecting their awareness, and assess patient's satisfaction with their doctors explanations of medical conditions.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in October 2005 in the outpatient clinics of King Khalid University Hospital in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. The statistical package for Social Science was used for analysis.

RESULTS: Five hundred and one patients were included in the study. The mean age was 45.6 ± 16.8. Fifty-five percent were female and 29% were highly educated. Most of the patients (64.1%) knew their diagnoses. This was significantly associated with the educational level; chronicity of the disease, and the awareness of other issues related to their illness such as complications and name of their medications (p<0.05). Few patients (20%) knew complications of their diseases. Seventy percent of patients were satisfied with their doctors' explanation of their disease. Knowing the diagnosis (p=0.001) and the disease complications (p=0.014) were associated significantly with patients' satisfaction.

CONCLUSION: These figures are less than what they should be. Physicians must be advised of the importance of proper patient education. In addition, the lack of proper education by physicians demonstrated in this study should be compensated for by an increase in non-physician based education tools.