Abstract: Objective To investigate the cognition and attitude on medical dispute and its management among medical staff and patients,and to provide references for efficient prevention and management of medical dispute.Methods Totally 810 medical staff and 835 outpatients were recruited from 7 first-class tertiary hospitals in Beijing and surveyed with a self-designed questionnaire between January and February 2015.Results Among both medical staff and the outpatients,more than 70% of the participants accepted that main reasons for medical dispute include the gap between therapeutic efficacy and the patients' expectation,difference in the understanding on therapeutic efficacy between medical staff and patients,and insufficient communication between medical staff and patients.Perfecting relevant laws/regulations and balancing medical service resources allocation were the two major preventive measures for medical dispute suggested by 97.8% and 97.3% of the medical staff; while promoting medical personnel to provide good medical service and improving skills of communication with patients were the two suggested by 92.7% and 92.s% of the outpatients surveyed.The medical staff considered third-party mediation and legal arbitration but the outpatients considered administrative intermediation and bilateral negotiation as the prime choices among the four routes for the management of medical dispute.Conclusion The gap in medical information access between medical staff and patients and imbalanced allocation of medical resources are important causes of medical disputes.Efforts should be made in exploring patterns for efficient third-party mediation,standardized mechanism for multiparty involved management,and efficient complementation of different management routes for the treatment of medical dispute.