Quality of paediatric care: application and validation of an instrument for measuring parent satisfaction with hospital care

Objective. To apply and validate an adapted version of an existing adult pa tient questionnaire in a study of parental satisfaction with paediatric car e in a university hospital. Design. A cross-sectional, anonymous questionnaire study. A total of 912 qu estionnaires were distributed to parents by hospital staff during a 2-week period. Setting. A university children's hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Study participants. Six hundred and twenty-four parents whose children were receiving care at the hospital during a 2-week period in April of 1999. Main outcome measures. The GS-item questionnaire uses eight main measuremen t indices and an overall quality rating to define parental satisfaction wit h paediatric care, Measures of the instrument's reliability and validity we re established by comparison with results of a pilot study conducted 1 year earlier on the paediatric departments of two regional Swedish hospitals. A il measures were compared to reliability and validity estimates in the orig inal patient questionnaire. Results. A total of 624 questionnaires were returned, a response rate of 68 %. The instrument demonstrated good reliability and validity Reliability es timates for all eight indices were greater than 0.70 and consistent over ti me. Inter-index correlations were generally lower than 0.60, indicating ind ex independence. Of the nine parameters measured, parents were most satisfi ed with staff attitudes, care processes and medical treatment. Parents' rat ings were lowest for accessibility and staff work environment. Conclusion. This study presents a valid and reliable questionnaire instrume nt for measuring parental views of paediatric hospital care. The instrument measures the quality of paediatric care from a broader perspective than pr eviously existing parent questionnaires.