Factors associated with patient satisfaction towards pharmacy services among out-patients attending public health clinics: Questionnaire development and its application

Introduction: Patient satisfaction is widely used to measure quality of
healthcare by identifying potential areas for improvement. Aim of study is
to assess patient satisfaction towards pharmacy services and its
associated factors using newly developed questionnaire among outpatients
attending public health clinics.   Materials and
Methods: Public Health Clinic Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PHC-PSQ)
towards pharmacy services was developed using exploratory factor analysis
and Cronbach’s α.  A cross-sectional study was conducted among
400 patients visiting the pharmacy in three randomly selected public
health clinics recruited via systematic random sampling. Data was
collected using a set of questionnaire including PHC-PSQ. Factors
associated with patient satisfaction was analysed using multiple linear
regression. Results: Final PHC-PSQ consisted of three domains
(administrative competency, technical competency and convenience of
location) and 22 items with 69.9% total variance explained.
Cronbach's α for total items was 0.96. Total mean score for patient
satisfaction was 7.56 (SD 1.32). Older age and higher education were
associated with lower patient satisfaction mean score. Patients who had
visited the pharmacy more than once in the past three months, perceived to
be in better health status and had a more correct general knowledge of
pharmacists expressed higher patient satisfaction mean score. Conclusions:
PHC-PSQ is a newly developed tool to measure patient satisfaction towards
pharmacy services in public health clinics in Malaysia. Patient
satisfaction was relatively high. Age, education, frequency of visit,
self-perceived health status and general knowledge of pharmacists were
factors significantly associated with patient satisfaction.