Development and testing of a visit-specific patient satisfaction questionnaire: The Princess Margaret Hospital Satisfaction with Doctor Questionnaire

Purpose: To develop a psychometrically sound patient-satisfaction-with-phys ician questionnaire that can be used in an outpatient oncology setting. Patients and Methods: The questionnaire was developed by a four-step proces s involving a total of 277 cancer patients, The item-generation process uti lized input from 95 oncology outpatients, three medical researchers, and th e relevant literature. Items were tested by 70 of the above patients, Initi al item reduction was achieved by input from another eight patients, Factor analysis and validity testing used data derived from a different group of 174 oncology outpatients, Convergent validity was tested by correlating the Princess Margaret Hospital Patient Satisfaction with Doctor Questionnaire (PMH/PSQ-MD) with Rubin et al's Physician subscale of the Patient's Viewpoi nt Questionnaire (PS-PVQ) and Smith et al's Patient-Doctor Interaction Scal e (PDIS), Divergent validity was tested by comparing these questionnaires w ith Spitzer's quality of life (QOL) questionnaire. Results: The final PMH/PSQ-MD is a 29-item self-administered questionnaire with four response categories and a "does not apply" category, Four domains were confirmed by factor analysis: (1) information exchange, (2) interpers onal skills, (3) empathy, and (4) quality of time. The questionnaire hers o n overall Cronbach's alpha of 0.97; the values for each domain are, respect ively, 0.92, 0.90, 0.88, and 0.88, The PMH/PSQ-MD correlated well with both the PDIS and the PS-PVQ (P < .001 for both), Divergent validity was confir med with Spitzer's QOL questionnaire. Conclusion: The PMH/PSQ-MD is an outpatient satisfaction questionnaire spec ific to the patient-physician interaction that has shown excellent internal consistency, is feasible, and has strong support for validity in this onco logy population. (C) 1999 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.