Published 16 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a485
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a485

Research

Interventions before consultations to help patients address their information needs by encouraging question asking: systematic review

¹ Neuadd Meirionydd, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF14 4XN, ² Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group, Australian Institute of Primary Care, LaTrobe University, Victoria, Australia, ³ Clinical Effectiveness Support Unit (Wales) Roseway, Llandough Hospital, Penarth, ⁴ School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia

Objective To assess the effects on patients, clinicians, and the healthcare system of interventions before consultations to help patients or their representatives gather information in consultations by question asking.

Design Systematic review with meta-analysis.

Data sources Electronic literature searches of seven databases and hand searching of one journal and bibliographies of relevant articles.

Review methods Inclusion criteria included randomised controlled trials.

Main outcome measures Primary outcomes were question asking; patients’ anxiety, knowledge, and satisfaction; and length of consultation.

Results 33 randomised trials of variable quality involving 8244 patients were identified. A few studies showed positive effects. Meta-analyses showed small and statistically significantly increases in question asking (standardised mean difference 0.27, 95% confidence interval 0.19 to 0.36) and patients’ satisfaction (0.09, 0.03 to 0.16). Non-statistically significant changes occurred in patients’ anxiety before consultations (weighted mean difference –1.56, –7.10 to 3.97), patients’ anxiety after consultations (standardised mean difference –0.08, –0.22 to 0.06), patients’ knowledge (–0.34, –0.94 to 0.25), and length of consultation (0.10, –0.05 to 0.25). Interventions comprising written materials had similar effects on question asking, consultation length, and patients’ satisfaction as those comprising the coaching of patients. Interventions with additional training of clinicians had little further effect than those targeted at patients alone for patients’ satisfaction and consultation length.

Conclusions Interventions for patients before consultations produce small benefits for patients. This may be because patients and clinicians have established behaviours in consultations that are difficult to change. Alternatively small increases in question asking may not be sufficient to make notable changes to other outcomes.

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