Obtaining feedback from clients

Abstract

In a previous article (Breese, 1988), I reported on a study of objective measures (number of drug prescriptions and surgery attendances) obtained from 32 clients who had been seen for counselling in an agency located in a GPs’ surgery. In the summer of 1988 six colleagues and I who see clients in that surgery and in a Health Centre in a nearby town decided to carry out a subjective study by contacting clients themselves who had been counselled. The 51 clients whom we wrote to, enclosing a questionnaire and s.a.e., could be described as fairly representative of those we had seen; “fairly” because we only contacted those whose current addresses we knew and we eliminated any whom we knew should not be contacted by post because a spouse or other household member had not been aware they had been for counselling. All 51 were clients whose counselling had ended in either 1987 or 1988. This article reports briefly on some of the findings.