Patient satisfaction associated with correct identification of physicians' photographs

To determine whether placement of photographs of physicians in hospital rooms improves patients' satisfaction with their medical care. This is a prospective, controlled study of 224 patients admitted to general internal medicine services in a teaching hospital. The intervention consisted of photographs (8 x 10 in) of attending and resident physicians displayed in the patients' rooms. Before dismissal, patients completed a survey that required them to match names with photographs of physician caregivers and included patient satisfaction questions. The primary outcome was whether patients who had photographs in their hospital room would correctly identify more physicians than those with no photographs in their room. The presence of photographs on the hospital wall was associated with a significant improvement in the number of physicians identified correctly (odds ratio [OR], 1.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.47-2.27; P