Variation in perceived competence, glycemic control, and patient satisfaction: relationship to autonomy support from physicians

Quality improvement efforts need to pay greater attention to patient competence, satisfaction, and depression, in addition to glycemic control. Clinician autonomy support was found to be reliably measured and moderately correlated with psychosocial and biologic outcomes related to diabetes self-management. These results suggest training clinicians to increase their support of patient autonomy may be one important avenue to improve diabetes outcomes.