Last update:
   29-Jun-2007
 

Arch Hellen Med, 24(1), January-February 2007, 89-96

HEALTH ECONOMICS

Questionnaire for the measurement of outpatient satisfaction
in the ophthalmology clinic of a Greek public hospital

V. ALETRAS,1 F. ZACHARAKI,2 D. NIAKAS3
1Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, Ôhessaloniki,
2Ophthalmology Clinic, University Hospital of Larissa, Larissa,
3School of Social Sciences, Hellenic Open University, Athens, Greece

OBJECTIVE Ôhis study aimed at developing a reliable and valid instrument for the measurement of hospital outpatient satisfaction and administering it to evaluate patient’s views in a specific Greek health care setting.

METHOD Literature review, on-the-spot observation and cognitive interviews, along with extensive pre-testing, yielded a questionnaire designed to assess the level of satisfaction of users of outpatient services in a public hospital. The questionnaire consists of closed-ended items measured on a 5-point Likert scale. It was administered via telephone to a sample of 100 adult patients who visited the outpatient department of an ophthalmology clinic at the University Hospital of Larissa during the first half of 2005. Individual item scores were factor analysed in order to form appropriate summated scales, the reliability and validity of which were subsequently assessed statistically.

RESULTS Ôhe response rate was 70.4%. The factors derived initially were: medical staff, nursing staff, appointment time and hospital environment. The first three scales had satisfactory Cronbach coefficients, whereas that related to hospital environment was excluded due to its low internal consistency. The retained scales also had high test-retest and interrater reliability coefficients in a smaller sample of 25 subjects. Content validity was pursued by asking respondents to assess the significance of individual items, at the stage of pre-testing. Multi-trait analysis corroborated the presence of convergent and divergent validity. Finally, the mean value of overall satisfaction was 4.54 (the maximum possible score was 5), with the summated scale mean scores being 4.85 for the medical staff, 4.70 for the nursing staff and 3.83 for the appointment time.

CONCLUSIONS The study findings were satisfactory regarding the development of a reliable and valid instrument to capture outpatient satisfaction. Future research should employ larger samples and extend its range to other outpatient departments of public hospitals. The specific assessment of outpatient services of the ophthalmology clinic indicated a high level of patient satisfaction. Room for improvement was identified mainly for factors related to appointment time.

Key words: Hospital, Patient satisfaction, Questionnaire, Reliability, Validity.

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