Patient reported experience measures provide vital information on the experience that patients have regarding their care and thus have become a recent focus of interest. We have developed a questionnaire to assess PREMS in patients with COPD attending a hospital outpatient clinic. The purpose of the questionnaire was to assess whether the processes that are necessary to improve outcomes in COPD had been dealt with in the clinic and understood by the patient. Also to assess in a similar way the understanding of COPD by the patient and whether they were satisfied with the consultation.

Results The questionnaire was completed by 142 new and follow up patients. Results are presented in the table below. 92% of patients had spirometry performed at their visit and 78% had the results explained. Before the consultation 57% of patients thought they had a good understanding, 30% moderate and 13% little or no understanding of their condition. Afterwards these improved to 67%,23% and 10% respectively. 29% believed that their knowledge of how to reduce exacerbations had increased after the consultation. 87% of patients thought that the length of the review was about right (average 20 minutes). 85% were satisfied overall with the consultation.

Conclusion We have studied COPD care from the patient’s perspective. We have found evidence that simple clinician-led measures (such as flu vaccination and spirometry) have been explained either in clinic or previously and understood by the patient. We were less successful in dealing with more complex patient-centred experiences such as understanding of the disease and self management of exacerbations. Following this study we plan to develop a questionnaire dealing with the patient’s understanding of their disease that would be filled in before attending clinic. This would allow areas of concern to the patient to be specifically addressed in the consultation. In addition the questionnaire could be used to provide feedback to individual clinicians on their effectiveness in outpatient clinics.