Introduction:
Healthcare systems are subject to evaluation by all its participants and the public. The results of national studies available in this regard suggest a clearly negative perception of the Polish healthcare system. This attitude can be interpreted as a consequence of unfulfilled expectations of the public opinion, which constitutes expectations as important study field. The general aim is to verify the current state of research on the relationship between the components of knowledge, expectations and evaluation in order to identify dominating research directions as well as gaps in existing knowledge.

Material and Methods:
The study used the method of narrative review conducted in the PubMed and Embase databases. Only publications in English were included in the review.

Results:
2239 source articles were identified, and 36 publications were included in the final analysis. Based on Laferton’s model , the analyzed sources were categorized according to the reference to expectations related to behavior or therapy. Out of 36 analyzed publications 28 (77.78%) were papers assigned to at least 2 categories. In total 24 out of 36 (66.67%) articles included were those referring to expectations related to treatment results. Most of the publications (63.9%, i.e. 23 out of 36) described the relationship between the knowledge and expectations. The connection between expectations and evaluation was investigated by 8 publications, and 5 publications combined all three elements (knowledge, expectations and evaluation).

Conclusions:
The review of the literature indicates that the level of knowledge of the recipients of health services may be an important determinant of their expectations towards service providers and the forms of treatment received. The collected evidence does not provide a clear answer to the question of the impact of making expectations more realistic on the assessment of the health care system.