RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To describe patient satisfaction of their relationship with the family physician, using the PDRQ-9 questionnaire and assess its psychometric properties. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: Six Primary Care Health centres in the Community of Madrid, Spain. PARTICIPANTS: Four hundred and fifty one patients randomly selected from those who had just visited their family physician. INTERVENTIONS: Interviews were carried out to collect demographic characteristics, health needs, the accessibility to the service, and the socioeconomic situation of the subjects. MEASUREMENTS: The PDRQ-9 responses were collected and a synthetic satisfaction index was constructed. A multivariable model was designed to explain differences in satisfaction. RESULTS: The mean satisfaction index was 4.41 (95% CI: 4.33-4.48) on a scale of 1 (the worst) to 5 (the best satisfaction possible), with a median of 4.78 (interquartile range 4.00-5.00). Four of every 10 subjects expressed the maximum possible satisfaction ("ceiling effect"). A single factor explained 75.3% of the variance, with a Cronbach alpha value of 0.952. Age (OR 1.03, 95% CI: 1.02-1.05) and living in rural areas (OR 1.44, 95% CI: 0.94-2.20) were associated with above average satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: Primary care users feel their relationship with their family physicians are very satisfactory, particularly in those who are older and who live in rural areas. The PDRQ-9 questionnaire shows a high internal consistency, but it is not good enough to discriminate in the upper part of the scale.