Objective  To examine the cause of precautionary medical examination (PME) in favor of doctors′ willingness and medical disputes and the relationship between them and to provide references for developing strategies to reduce unnecessary PME and to improve doctor-patient relationship.

  Methods  We conducted an on-site and internet-based questionnaire survey among 324 patients selected with convenience sampling at internal medicine department, general surgery department and department of gynecology of 7 hospitals in Guangzhou city between January and March 2018. Statistical analysis was conducted with Excel and SPSS 20.0.

  Results  There were statistically significant differences in the ratio of experiencing PME among the participants at various ages and with different education background (both P < 0.001); the participants with the master′s degree reported higher proportion (66.7%) of experiencing PME than the participants with university degree (24.9%) and those with college degree or below (22.7%). There were also significant differences in the ratio of experiencing medical dispute among the participants at various ages and with different education background (P < 0.001). The participants′ experience of medical dispute influenced their suspicions about precautionary medical examination (P < 0.05); while the participants experiencing PME were more likely to have medical disputes than those who not experiencing PME.

  Conclusion  Precautionary medical examination is closely related to medical dispute. Relevant policies should be formulated by the government to control the prevalence of precautionary medical examination.