Factors associated with patient satisfaction in an outpatient hospital pharmacy.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To analyse the factors leading to greater satisfaction among patients attending the outpatient hospital pharmacy (OPh). METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted of patients attending the OPh of a 1250-bed university hospital. A self-administered questionnaire for measuring outpatients' satisfaction was developed. Global satisfaction was measured on a scale of 1 to 10. Indices of perceived quality for accessibility, interpersonal professional-patient relationship and the convenience of the process were modelled through a principal component analysis using varimax rotation. The relationship between the principal components and overall satisfaction was evaluated using regression analysis. RESULTS: A questionnaire-based survey was conducted between May and June 2015. A total of 509 valid responses (86.9% response rate) were collected from the OPh. The overall satisfaction score was 7.81 (95% CI 7.59 to 8.04). The principal component analysis produced two components that explained 62.1% of the variance. The first component (CP1) contained questions related to the adequacy of the resources and services. The second component (CP2) contained questions about interpersonal professional-patient relationship. An additional unit in the CP2 was associated with a 3.23 increased risk of having higher satisfaction scores, while an increase of an additional unit in CP1 was associated with a 1.93 increased risk of having higher satisfaction scores. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that the factor which predicts the satisfaction of patients who come to the OPh is the quality of care provided by pharmacists-in particular, information provided, resolution of doubts, personal attention and time devoted to the patient.