Looking Through the Patients' Eyes: Measuring Patient Satisfaction in a Public Hospital

Patient satisfaction is a personal evaluation of health-care services that is often used as an indicator of quality of care. The aim of this study was to identify aspects of hospital care that affect patient satisfaction by examining the structural and convergent validity of an in-house questionnaire.

The sample consisted of 3320 patients discharged from an Italian public hospital. The questionnaire included items exploring communication with nurses and physicians, pain management, quality of accommodation, and discharge information. Data were analyzed using the Rasch model.

From the patients' perspective, the number of response options was excessive and the questionnaire proved to have both medical and accommodation dimensions. Patients, on average, gave higher satisfaction scores to the medical dimension over the accommodation dimension. Higher satisfaction was associated with kindness and courtesy of the nursing staff, doctors' courtesy, and the quality of bed linen.

The results support the administration of the questionnaire but suggest change in the hospital's analytical procedures in order to match the drivers of satisfaction as seen by the patients.