Acceptability of methods and measures used to determine quality of general practice consultations: results of a focus group study and an acceptability questionnaire

General practitioner activity is increasingly under pressure to monitor its performance. The involvement of service users in the development and assessment of services is said to be a key feature of this process. This article reports on the acceptability among general practitioners of a patient-completed post-consultation measure of outcome (the Patient Enablement Instrument; PEI), and its use in conjunction with two further indicators of quality, namely time spent in consultation and patients reporting knowing the doctor well. The survey was conducted using focus groups and the administration of a postal questionnaire among a group of general practices that had participated and received feedback from a large quantitative study testing these measures. The focus group study provided useful insights into general practitioners' perceptions of patient assessment of their performance and their concerns surrounding the measurement of general practice activity. The general practitioners' perceptions of the measures under the study were enmeshed within these concerns overall. The PEI was seen as being generally acceptable as a measure of patient assessment of care, and the methods of data collection were acceptable for routine use in general practice. General practitioners who performed better in terms of their feedback scores generally approved more of the proposed measures. However, these general practitioners were not comfortable with the concept of assessment of the clinical interaction by patients, and were anxious to link such assessment explicitly with clinical (disease-related) outcome. Doctors who performed ‘better’ were no more likely than those who performed less well to advocate more use of patient assessment, or to believe that patient assessment of consultations is a reliable quality indicator. These concerns need to be addressed if patients' assessments of their care are to be taken seriously.