Perreault M, Pawliuk N, Veilleux R, Rousseau M, Tardif H; AcademyHealth. Meeting (2004 : San Diego, Calif.).
Abstr AcademyHealth Meet. 2004; 21: abstract no. 1921.
Douglas Hospital /McGill University, General Psychiatry Division, 6875 boul. LaSalle, Montreal, Quebec, H1M 2E6 Tel. (514) 761-6131 (2823) Fax 514.888.4063
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Standardized scales present a number of limitations for patient satisfaction assessment: limited usefulness of global scores generated, item content not always suited for the services evaluated, unavailability of validated scales with established norms to apply to services being evaluated, and tendency to obtain high satisfaction scores. Perreault et al. (1993) have suggested a qualitative method based on personal interviews to address these limitations. In the context of limited resources, the primary objective of this study is to validate the procedure based on open-ended questions, with short self-administered questionnaires. STUDY DESIGN: Survey design with a random sampling of 243 psychiatric outpatients. Two open-ended questions were used: "What do you like most at the clinic?" and "What services could be improved at the clinic?". A 5 category content analysis grid was used. Comments were also categorized to create a trichotomized satisfaction score, for parametric analyses. Convergent validity was tested with the OQOS (Perreault et al., 2001), a standardized 21 item multidimensional satisfaction scale. POPULATION STUDIED: Clients were recruited from three outpatient clinics of the Douglas Hospital, a 300 bed and 5000 outpatient psychiatric hospital covering the south-west region of Montreal. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: As expected, open ended questions generated significantly lower satisfaction scores than the standardized scale. Main sources of dissatisfaction were clinic organization and clinic environment. Clinicians were the main source of client satisfaction. In comparison with personal interviews, the number of comments emitted to self-administered open-ended questions was less than half and answers were shorter. Quantitative scores based on these questions were also correlated with the OQOS. CONCLUSIONS: Even if the results are not as detailed as the ones obtained in personal interviews, the procedure appears useful for the identification of the main sources of patient dissatisfaction. It is also possible to quantify the qualitative information obtained and generate indicators comparable to the scores of standardized scales for monitoring purposes. IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY, DELIVERY OR PRACTICE: Considering the low cost of such a procedure, it could represent a useful approach to generate basic information on users perspective. Even if, compared with personal interviews, the qualitative information collected with self-administered questionnaires is limited, it provides useful information on specific aspects of the program. This is, in general, more informative and useful than global scores generated by satisfaction scales, for the managers who need to make decisions on service improvement.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- Ambulatory Care Facilities
- Data Collection
- Evaluation Studies
- Hospitals
- Hospitals, Psychiatric
- Humans
- Interviews as Topic
- Outcome and Process Assessment (Health Care)
- Patient Satisfaction
- Psychiatry
- Questionnaires
- methods
- hsrmtgs
UI: 103624955
From Meeting Abstracts