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BACKGROUND: Although commonly diagnosed, gout often remains a poorly managed disease. This is partially due to a lack of awareness of the long-term effect of gout among patients and healthcare professionals. AIM: To understand unmet needs for patients and provide insight into achieving better treatment. DESIGN & SETTING: A quantitative online questionnaire collected from 1100 people with gout from 14 countries within Europe. METHOD: Patients were recruited to complete an online survey via healthcare professional (HCP) referral, patient associations, or market research panels. Patients were included if they had been diagnosed with gout by a physician. Prior to commencement, patients were made aware that this study was sponsored by Grünenthal. The responses collected were collated and analyses were performed. RESULTS: Patients had an average of 2.9 gout flares within a 12-month period. Although 79% of patients were satisfied with treatment, inadequate gout control was also reported by 71% of patients. Furthermore, 84% experienced moderate-to-severe pain with their most recent flare. Of those who acknowledged treatment dissatisfaction, only 24% discussed other options with their GP. Most patients reported irregular follow-up and serum uric acid (sUA) monitoring. In addition, loss of belief that more can be done was a key barrier for patients. CONCLUSION: Patients reported severe pain and social burden, coupled with low treatment expectation and lack of awareness of target sUA. Education around knowing and reaching sUA target is needed so that patients can receive and GPs can deliver higher quality management.
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BACKGROUND: Accurate patient expectations are important to optimise treatment success, especially for complex conditions such as chronic pain. Communication may be the key to managing patient expectations. This study aimed to explore whether health care provider communication influences patient expectations and which communication aspects are most important. METHODS: We conducted secondary analyses on data that had been collected between September and November 2012. 2603 patients suffering from chronic pain were invited to complete a survey. RESULTS: Although 69.9% of patients achieved or surpassed their treatment goal, 30.2% of patients were unsatisfied. Even though overall health care provider communication and shared decision making were unrelated to patient expectations, several affective communication aspects were related. These aspects were attentive listening, taking enough time, building patient's trust in the physician's competence and giving patients the feeling that the physician is doing all he or she can (p's < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Even though treatment goals are not always explicitly discussed, patients still form expectations regarding treatment outcomes. Affective communication may be more important for managing patient expectations than sharing information. Building a good therapeutic relationship by showing affective communication may be important to increase the accuracy of patient expectations.