ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF SATISFACTION WITH TREATMENT

Patient satisfaction with treatments is a growing area of research tha t has tremendous potential to provide outcome measures for clinical tr ials and disease management programs. It also has applications in mark eting and product development, especially for the treatment of chronic diseases. The objective of this review is to demonstrate that treatme nt satisfaction is a distinct area of research that has produced some important initial results. We define treatment satisfaction and provid e a conceptual framework that clarifies the role of treatment expectat ions, preferences, and satisfaction in the context of healthcare in ge neral, Nineteen articles were selected from more than 1,400 abstracts and were reviewed for the following information: (1) topics covered; ( 2) method used to design the measure; (3) descriptive statistics; (4) assessment with respect to the attributes in the Instrument Review Cri teria of the Medical Outcome Trust's Scientific Advisory Committee; an d (5) covariates, We conclude that some important initial results abou t treatment satisfaction have been obtained, but that much work remain s to be performed, We recommend that future research devote more atten tion to qualitative research with patients, assessment of the measures , and the covariates presented in the conceptual model. We also recomm end that decision makers insist on measures that meet these criteria.