Validation of a patient satisfaction questionnaire for services provided in Spanish community pharmacies

Background The concept of Pharmaceutical Care (PC) is being gradually developed, and it's impact in health care should be measured using a quality tool. Objective The aim of this study was to describe and assess the psychometric properties of a patient satisfaction questionnaire (PSQ) for PC services in community pharmacies in Seville, Spain. It was based on a previous questionnaire in Spanish. Methods The face and content validity were assessed using the items of a validated questionnaire developed by Traverso et al. and adapted to the Seville pharmacy patient population. The PSQ was designed for use in the community pharmacy setting by a panel of seven pharmacists with expertise in both PC and questionnaire design. The result, was a 'draft PSQ' which comprised of 27 multidimensional items, with responses recorded on a five-point 'Likert-type scale'. The validity and reliability of the 'final PSQ' was carried out using a cross-sectional and analytical study. Eighteen community pharmacies agreed to participate in the study. The draft PSQ was a self completion questionnaire distributed to patients by pharmacists following selection criteria. The survey response rate was assessed. The validity was determined by establishing the distribution of the PSQ's items and dimensions of the PSQ through factor analysis, and the reliability was evaluated with Cronbach's alpha coefficient (alpha). Results Two-hundred and twenty-three patients took part in the study.The factor analysis with varimax rotation established a 'final PSQ' with 24 items over two dimensions: Medication Therapy Management (MTM) and General satisfaction with the pharmacy/staff and services (GSP/SS) which extracted 63.5% of the variance. The internal consistency by alpha was 0.964 for the PSQ and 0.959 and 0.916 for the two dimensions, respectively. The median (mode) score for GSP/SS was 5.0 (5.0) and 4.0 (5.0) for MTM. The Wilcoxon-test indicated that the difference between these scores was statistically significant (P < 0.001). Conclusion Our results suggest that the PSQ is a two dimensional instrument with psychometric properties able to assess patient satisfaction in community pharmacies. However, its validity and reliability need to be further confirmed in different PC settings and its sensitivity to measure changes in satisfaction over time also needs to be established.