MEASURING PATIENT SATISFACTION WITH PHARMACEUTICAL SERVICES

Common conceptualizations of satisfaction are discussed, and different ways of measuring patient satisfaction with pharmaceutical services a re suggested. Patient satisfaction is becoming increasingly popular as an indicator of the quality of health care services, including pharma ceutical services. Satisfaction can be conceptualized as a performance evaluation, disconfirmation of expectations, an affect-based assessme nt, or an equity-based assessment. A satisfaction measure should have a theoretical base on which the measure's validity can be assessed. Th e measure chosen must fit the context of an overall research process, and the researcher must have a clear idea of what is to be measured. A large pool of items, or questions, for potential inclusion in a patie nt-satisfaction questionnaire can then be generated. The researcher sh ould develop a format for each item (e.g., Likert scale). The items sh ould be reviewed by experts for relevance and completeness. Questions that will help validate other questions should be included. To assess reliability and validity, the questionnaire should be given to a repre sentative sample of respondents before being refined into its final fo rmat. Finally, the researcher must ensure that the patient-satisfactio n questionnaire is practical (e.g., in terms of length and complexity) . No single standard measure of patient satisfaction is applicable to all pharmacy situations. Researchers should either use an existing mea sure with demonstrated reliability and validity or develop a new measu re by using a systematic process.