The Improving Practice Questionnaire (IPQ): A practical tool for general practices seeking patient views

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Authors
Greco, Michael
Powell, Roy
K, Sweeney
Carter, Mary
Journal
Education for Primary Care
Type
Journal Article
Publisher
Ingenta
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Copyright of Education for Primary Care is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd
The Improving Practice Questionnaire (IPQ) is a patient feedback instrument that combines both the general issues around primary care, such as access, availability of information, preventive care and health promotion, as well as the patient's experience of the doctor's interpersonal skills in the medical consultation. This paper reports on the development and validation of the IPQ. Results are based on a survey of 361 practices throughout the United Kingdom involving 1422 GPs and 22 nurses. A total of 55687 patients completed the questionnaire. Results showed that the IPQ has sound validity and reliability properties. Findings highlighted that areas in most need of improvement concentrated around issues such as reducing waiting times to see the doctor, improving access to after-hours care and other types of visits, and being able to speak to a doctor on the telephone when necessary. Doctors' communication skills were rated more highly than practice organisational issues. The IPQ may assist individual general practices, their staff and primary care organisations to monitor and improve the quality of their services to the public. It has been translated into other languages such as Somali, Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, Arabic and Gujarati.
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