Effect of chair placement on physicians’ behavior and patients’ satisfaction: randomized deception trial

Abstract Objective To evaluate the effect of chair placement on length of time physicians sit during a bedside consultation and patients’ satisfaction. Design Single center, double blind, randomized controlled deception trial. Setting County hospital in Texas, USA. Participants 51 hospitalist physicians providing direct care services, and 125 observed encounters of patients who could answer four orientation questions correctly before study entry, April 2022 to February 2023. Intervention Each patient encounter was randomized to either chair placement (≤3 feet (0.9 m) of patient’s bedside and facing the bed) or usual chair location (control). Main outcome measures The primary outcome was the binary decision of the physician to sit or not sit at any point during a patient encounter. Secondary outcomes included patient satisfaction, as assessed with the Tool to Assess Inpatient Satisfaction with Care from Hospitalists (TAISCH) and the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys, time in the room, and both physicians’ and patients’ perception of time in the room. Results 125 patient encounters were randomized (60 to chair placement and 65 to control). 38 of the 60 physicians in the chair placement group sat during the patient encounter compared with five of the 65 physicians in the control group (odds ratio 20.7, 95% confidence interval 7.2 to 59.4; P<0.001). The absolute risk difference between the intervention and control groups was 0.55 (95% confidence interval 0.42 to 0.69). Overall, 1.8 chairs needed to be placed for a physician to sit. Intervention was associated with 3.9% greater TAISCH scores (effect estimate 3.9, 95% confidence interval 0.9 to 7.0; P=0.01) and 5.1 greater odds of complete scores on HCAHPS (95% confidence interval 1.06 to 24.9, P=0.04). Chair placement was not associated with time spent in the room (10.6 minutes v control 10.6 minutes) nor perception of time in the room for physicians (9.4 minutes v 9.8 minutes) or patients (13.1 minutes v 13.5 minutes). Conclusion Chair placement is a simple, no cost, low tech intervention that increases a physician’s likelihood of sitting during a bedside consultation and resulted in higher patients’ scores for both satisfaction and communication. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05250778 .