Patient empowerment within a coronary care unit: insights for health professionals drawn from a patient satisfaction survey

The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate coronary care patients’ perceptions of their care and interventions related to empowerment and strengthening patient choice. The study, conducted in one acute National Health Service (NHS) Trust in Cambridgeshire, England, and completed in 2002, employed a prospective survey design. The research used a self-completion, pilot, postal questionnaire, including closed, open and scaled questions as the main method of data collection. From a total of 200 eligible patients, an unselected, consecutive sample of 142 in-patients consented to participate, of whom 103 returned the questionnaire—–a response rate of 73%. In contrast to much published literature, this study demonstrated that empowerment issues involving the rights of coronary care patients to be primary decision makers, managers of their illnesses and ultimate arbiters of their treatment and care were of minimal concern to all but a few. Almost 90% of patients were content to entrust their care exclusively to health professionals based on their confidence in the clinical expertise of the medical and nursing staff. Findings suggested that, while respondents were well-satisfied with their care, the ethos of patient empowerment was of peripheral concern and readily abdicated in the face of acute illness.