Assessment of patient satisfaction following pharmacist counselling session by a novel patient satisfaction feedback on counselling questionnaire

Objective The study aimed to develop a novel tool known as patient satisfaction feedback on counselling (PSF) questionnaire and documented patient satisfaction following pharmacist counselling using the tool. Methods A 2-month cross-sectional study was conducted at Clifton Hospital Pharmacy in Karachi, Pakistan, using a novel questionnaire in both English and Urdu languages after face and content validation. Convenient sampling was employed, and data were analysed by SPSS v22. The study was approved by Ethics Committee of Clifton Hospital (Letter#23-18). Key findings Content validity index and reliability were reported at 0.83 and 0.88. All items loaded on a single factor. A total of 350 patients participated in the study. The response rate was 67.1%. Most patients were adults (70%), married (66%), graduates (64%), employed (42%) and resided in urban localities (92%). Most patients suffered from chronic illness (68%) and had no comorbidity (78%). Half of patients had previous exposure of pharmacist counselling (52%). Average counselling time was around 8-9 min (X = 8.7, SD = 4.3). More than half of patients (56%) were willing to pay an average cost of PKR 346 (US $ 3) for a pharmacist counselling session, and 60% of patients were satisfied with counselling. A significant correlation was reported between patient satisfaction rating and amount willing to pay (q = 0.284, P < 0.001), and duration of counselling (q = 0.592, P < 0.001). Conclusion Patients appeared satisfied with counselling. Age, education, comorbidity, illness type and duration, health insurance, number of medicines prescribed, urban residence and previous counselling exposure were determinants of patient satisfaction. Most notable finding was patients' willingness to pay for counselling should this service be charged that increased with patient satisfaction.