A COMPARISON OF METHODS FOR MEASURING PATIENT SATISFACTION WITH CONSULTATIONS IN PRIMARY-CARE

Background. Attention needs to be paid to comparing and standardizing methods for measuring patient satisfaction with consultations in prima ry care. Objectives. To compare the Medical Interview Satisfaction Sca le (MISS) and the Consultation Satisfaction Ouestionnaire (CSQ) in ter ms of acceptability, distribution of responses, reliability and gather evidence of validity. In addition, to compare the scores of patients completing the questionnaires immediately after the consultation in th e general practitioners' surgeries with those completing the questionn aires later at home. Methods. The two questionnaires were bound as a s ingle instrument with order determined at random. This was given to pa tients immediately after their consultations in eight practices in Sou th Glamorgan. Results. One hundred and ninety-eight of 316 (63%) patie nts completed and returned questionnaires. The distributions of patien t satisfaction scores for the two questionnaires were very similar. Fo r the MISS: mean 76.7% (SD 11.4); for the CSQ mean 77.2% (SD 12.6). Co rrelations between sub-scales ranged from 0.58-0.84 for the MISS and f rom 0.40-0.79 for the CSQ. The correlation between the overall scales was 0.82. Levels of reliability for the scales and sub-scales were fai r to good ranging from 0.78-0.96 for the MISS and from 0.73-0.94 for t he CSQ. Conclusions. The study does not identify one scale as being su perior in pyschometric terms, however by demonstrating consistency of responses it provides support for the scales as measures of patient sa tisfaction for use in primary care. The level of inter-correlation sug gests that the sub-scales may not be clearly independent of each other and suggests that total scores may be preferred. Lower levels of sati sfaction are expressed if patients complete questionnaires at home rat her than in general practitioners' surgeries.