Developing a Persian inpatient satisfaction questionnaire

Valid and reliable measures are required for assessing patient satisfaction meaningfully. The purpose of this paper was to develop and validate a Persian-language in-patient satisfaction questionnaire for patients discharged from Iranian medical and surgical services.

The cross-sectional survey included 400 patients randomly selected from six Tehran hospitals. A total of 405 patients responded to the questionnaire (76.3 percent response). To assess inter-item reliability and construct validity, factor analysis was carried out. Items belonging to each factor and their Cronbach's alpha coefficient were calculated.

A total of seven dimensions were identified: doctor-patient communication; nursing care; convenience; visitors; cleanliness; costs; and general satisfaction. Together, these dimensions explained 60 percent of the variance. All items, except three, revealed loadings above 0.4, while Cronbach's alpha exceeded 0.8 for all dimensions, except visitors (0.66). Patient satisfaction levels were relatively high.

Results must be interpreted cautiously owing to high satisfaction, which should not be considered as comprehensive evidence of high performance without important additional service-performance information. Qualitative studies are recommended to complement the authors' quantitative satisfaction study.

The patient satisfaction questionnaire strives to be a valid and reliable instrument for assessing in-patient satisfaction with hospital services in Iran.