A New Instrument in Quality-of-Life Assessment: The Satisfaction Profile (SAT-P)

In health-related quality-of-life (QoL) assessment, patients' satisfaction has been receiving increasing prominence in the international literature. In Italy, too, in clinical settings the need to take the patient's point of view into account has become important. Since a specific instrument for this purpose was not available for the Italian population, the first two authors (GM, SC) developed the Satisfaction Profile (SAT-P), aimed at assessing patients' satisfaction with regard to 32 aspects of daily living. This idea derived from the authors' clinical experience as psychologists in a rehabilitation center working with patients suffering from chronic and severe diseases. The most familiar QoL questionnaires assess mainly patients' functional status and symptoms; but we also needed to evaluate the subjective impact of illness on our patients' lives according to the Health-related Quality-of-Life (HRQoL) theoretical model, which constitutes the base of our work [1,2]. Patients' satisfaction with