Primary care professionals’ satisfaction with access, communication and management advice from the diabetes team

Abstract

Most evidence on the delivery of diabetes services in primary care has focused on th organization of care rather than on the experiences of health care providers. We evali ated staff satisfaction with respect to access, communication, management advice, an understanding of roles. A postal survey of staff at 35 practices from two inner London pr mary care organizations was linked to profiles of the practice organization of diabetes can Data were analysed for 124 staff including 81 doctors and 43 nurses. Only 37 (46%) doc tors and 20 (47%) nurses were satisfied with the current system of diabetes care. Overal there were low levels of satisfaction with access to, communication with, or managemer advice from other members of the diabetes team. Only 29/81 (36%) of doctors understoo clearly either their own role or the role of others but 27/43 (63%) of nurses understoo their own role and 23 (53%) understood the role of others. Compared with practices wit less satisfied staff, practices where staff were more satisfied showed similar organiza tion of diabetes care in terms of the use of a register, recall system, clinical guideline: availability of equipment, organization of education programmes or use of audit. Sta were generally dissatisfied with diabetes services, but the level of satisfaction was nc associated with practice organization for diabetes care. Since a better team climate has been associated with higher quality care, more work should be done to understan influences on staff satisfaction in the delivery of diabetes care in primary settings. © 2006, Arnold. All rights reserved.