Evaluation of an intervention designed to enhance involvement of older patients in their own care

Objective: To implement a programme for involvement of older patients aged 70+ in general practice, and to detect quality changes after its implementation. Methods: The study was performed in 11 European countries as an uncontrolled before-and-after study, in which a number of GPs and patients answered a questionnaire before and after receiving an intervention. The intervention was aimed at motivating, instructing and facilitating GPs and older patients to increase patient involvement during consultation by use of a specially designed consultation leaflet. Results: Valid data from seven countries exist. There was a total of 765 patients and 70 GPs in the pre-intervention phase, and 564 patients and 49 GPs in the post-intervention phase. In the post-intervention group, 43% of the patients thought that the consultation leaflet had improved the consultation and 62% of the GPs found it to be useful. There were no significant differences between pre- and post-intervention patient perceptions of the level of involvement, evaluations of consultations and perceptions of feeling enabled to deal with their health situation. Conclusion: Quality of consultations as measured by patient satisfaction and patient enablement did not improve as a result of the intervention, but nearly half of the patients and two thirds of the GPs found the intervention to be useful. Unselected use of this intervention on all patients cannot be advised without further studies on possible effects. Future studies should focus on the applicability and benefits of the methods for special patient groups.