Validation of a patient satisfaction questionnaire in primary health care.

BACKGROUND Improvement in patient satisfaction with healthcare services can be evaluated by satisfaction questionnaires of high construct validity. OBJECTIVES To establish the dimensions and construct validity of a 20-item patient satisfaction questionnaire to assess satisfaction with general practice services. SUBJECTS In total, 1314 adult patients of both genders, who were users of healthcare services at the General Medicine Department of Health Centre Valjevo in Serbia for two consecutive years, were included in the study. METHODS Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was employed to identify similarities and dissimilarities among items comprising the satisfaction questionnaire. Patient satisfaction dimensions were estimated by principal component analysis for categorical data (CATAPCA). RESULTS The MDS model configuration derived two dimensions: (1) patient satisfaction with the timeliness of healthcare service provision; and (2) patient centredness related to doctors' and nurses' commitment towards their health. In the CATAPCA model, two dimensions of patient satisfaction were found: the first dimension patient satisfaction with medical staff and the second dimension was indicative of contextual patient dissatisfaction. CONCLUSIONS This study shows that the applied patient satisfaction questionnaire has high validity and reliability. It also has high sensitivity for longitudinal measurements, as well as good discriminatory power in measuring the different levels of patient satisfaction.

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