The acceptability of waiting times for elective general surgery and the appropriateness of prioritising patients

Table 5 Grouped responses (%) on the statements on the fairness of prioritisation, and the appropriate ethical basis and methods for it.

		Patients n = 255	Surgeons n = 99	OPs n = 93	GPs n = 63
Assigning priority to certain groups of patients on the waiting list is always unjustifiable.	Agree	34^a	12^b	12^b	24^b
	Disagree	51	84	79	71
If a patient has demonstrably more complaints as a result of an illness, he/she must be given priority.	Agree	82^a	91^b	75^a	94^b
	Disagree	11	5	11	0
A patient should be given priority if it is expected that he/she will benefit more from the treatment than another patient.	Agree	28^a	41^a	53^b	33^a
	Disagree	48	43	27	51
If certain patients are given priority, this can only be done in compliance with a nationally agreed system.	Agree	55^a	30^b	59^a	62^a
	Disagree	23	55	20	19
If it is allowed to prioritise patients, this works best if the physician can determine by him/herself which patients are given priority	Agree	43^a	73^b	42^a	46^a
	Disagree	41	16	37	33

Note: Percentages do not add to 100 as response category "neutral" is not shown; the response categories "fully disagree" and "disagree to some extent" are combined into "disagree", and "agree to some extent" and "fully agree" are combined into "agree".
Note 2: The numbers of patients and surgeons do not correspond fully with overall response numbers. This difference is due to missing values on some statements (the number of missing values per statement never exceeded 3).
^a,b: Non-corresponding superscripts between groups, indicate a significant difference in the responses (p < 0.05).

ISSN: 1472-6963