Development and testing of a 25-item patient satisfaction scale for black South African diabetic outpatients

Although there is general agreement that patient satisfaction is an integral component of service quality, there is a paucity of South African research on reliable and valid satisfaction measures and the effects of health status on satisfaction. A 25-item patient satisfaction scale was developed and tested for evaluating the quality of health care for black diabetic outpatients. It was hypothesised that: (1) the underlying dimensions of patient satisfaction were interpersonal and organisational; and (2) patients in poor health would be less satisfied with the quality of their care than patients in good health. The questionnaire was administered to 263 black outpatients from Pretoria Academic Hospital and Kalafong Hospital. Factor analysis was conducted on the patient satisfaction scale and three factors, accounting for 71% of the variance, were extracted. The major items on Factor I were helpfulness, communication, support and consideration, representing the interpersonal dimension. Factors II and III were mainly concerned with service logistics and technical expertise, with the emphasis on waiting time, follow-up and thoroughness of examination. The three factors had excellent reliability coefficients, ranging between 0.82 (technical), 0.85 (logistics) and 0.98 (interpersonal). Multiple analyses of co-variance showed that patients in poor general health were significantly less satisfied with the logistical (p = 0.004) and technical (p = 0.007) quality of their care than patients in good health; patients in poor mental health were significantly less satisfied with the interpersonal quality of their care (p = 0.05) than patients in good mental health. These findings provided support for both hypotheses and suggested that patients in poor health attend to different aspects of their care than patients in good health. Of more importance to clinical practice, the results endorsed the need for a multidisciplinary health team comprising nurse/social worker (Factor I: support, communication), health service managers (Factor II: service logistics) and physician (Factor III: technical expertise) to enhance treatment outcome for diabetic patients. It is recommended that: (1) further research is conducted on this patient satisfaction scale with diverse populations in different settings to complement and validate the scale for generalised use in South Africa; (2) the scale is used to collect information on patient satisfaction before and after implementing an intervention to improve the quality of health care, and (3) measurement of health status is an essential adjunct to assessment of patient satisfaction.