DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A PATIENT SATISFACTION QUESTIONNAIRE FOR OUTDOOR PATIENTS ATTENDING HEALTH CENTRES IN CITY OF NORTH INDIA

INTRODUCTION: Assessing patients’ experience of availing outdoor patient services is important for developing, evaluating and initiating improvement efforts of the health care facility. The study aims to develop and validate a questionnaire for assessing patient satisfaction with outdoor patient services. 

METHODS:  A literature review was conducted to generate items for an instrument to measure patient satisfaction with outdoor patient services. Content validity was evaluated by an expert panel of physicians. Psychometric properties of this scale were assessed by examining content, construct validity and reliability. Principal component analysis was performed. Originally the questionnaire had 30-item scale as well as demographic status items. This survey was distributed to 942 patients at the point of exit from  20 health care facilities of U.T Chandigarh of northern India. These data collection and analysis was done in SPSS 21.

RESULTS:  From the initial 30-item scale, a 17-item instrument was developed. Cronbachs alpha of the scale was 0.83. Factors identified in PCA were grouped into six factors viz. physician technical and communication skills; waiting area parameters, administration, location of health facility, pharmacy parameters and basic amenities parameters. 

CONCLUSIONS:  The developed questionnaire has demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties and can have a role in future research on the subject.