A NEW MEASURE OF PARENT SATISFACTION WITH MEDICAL-CARE PROVIDED IN THE NEONATAL INTENSIVE-CARE UNIT

The objective of this study was to develop a valid and reliable discri minative index that measures parent satisfaction with the medical care of their infant in the NICU. We developed an initial questionnaire (I tem Reduction Questionnaire) by reviewing the literature, survey ing 6 3 NICU clinicians, and interviewing 125 parents of infants in 2 tertia ry level NICUs regarding what they liked and disliked about the medica l care of their infants. We administered the Item Reduction Questionna ire, which included 154 items, to 60 parents, who rated the frequency and importance of these items. We included the items identified most f requently as sources of dissatisfaction and rated most important in a second, briefer instrument, the Neonatal Index of Parent Satisfaction (NIPS). To measure reliability we administered the NIPS to 47 parents twice, separated by a 1-week interval. We assessed validity by compari ng actual to predicted correlations between NIPS scores and other meas ures: parent's global rating of satisfaction, medical caregiver rating s of mother's satisfaction, medical caregiver ratings of father's sati sfaction, and parents' perception of their infant's health status. We also compared mean NIPS scores for parents who did and who did not rep ort incidents when errors occurred in the medical care of the infant. Of 154 items generated, we included 27 in the NIPS. The intraclass cor relation between two administrations of the NIPS to the same 47 parent s was 0.71. As predicted, there was a high correlation (0.61) between the NIPS score and parent global rating of satisfaction, and much lowe r correlations with other variables. Mean NIPS scores for parents who did and who did not report errors differed significantly (difference, 14.6; 95% CI around difference, 5.8-23.5; P < 0.001). The NIPS is like ly to be a useful measure for discriminating between parents who diffe r in terms of their satisfaction with the medical care of their infant in the NICU.