I get the fundamental philosophy behind the importance of checking with patients for 'satisfaction'...I really do.
But, alas, it's similar to what happened in college teaching where the 'student satisfaction' with the teacher becomes the primary metric by which he/she is judged. It's far too easy for 'medical excellentologist' or 'educational excellentologist' types to focus solely on 'student' or 'patient' satisfaction ratings to the exclusion of all else. There ARE critical points at which the optimal student/patient satisfaction scores diverge from truly excellent practice on the part of the instructor/provider. In professional psychotherapy training, having as one's ultimate goal to have all your patients like you to the greatest degree would be considered to be--at the very least--indication that you need more serious supervision/training and development of appropriate boundaries. At worst, it would appropriately be considered to be character pathology to an iatrogenic degree. At some point in the past 20-30 years the authority to make academic and/or medical decisions shifted from the instructor or health care provider (with an advanced degree and years of experience delivering the professional service) to some bachelor's/associate's degree having 'expertologist'/'excellentologist' schmuck with absolutely no professional training or experience but who knows how to put values into an Excel spreadsheet and futz around with elementary statistics (at the level of introduction to statistics for the behavioral sciences) and grossly mis- and over-interpret said statistics.
