Patient satisfaction questionnaires equally acceptable to patients

Abstract

Question

What is the patient perception and acceptability of four patient satisfaction questionnaires?

Study design

Randomised controlled trial.

Main results

There was no significant difference among questionnaires in proportion of responders, proportion of participants who found at least one question difficult to understand or poorly designed, or proportion of participants rating the questionnaire as excellent on global assessment (see Table 1). The Picker questionnaire took the longest to complete and had the most missing responses, but was the least likely to not cover important areas regarding hospital stay or have difficult to understand, poorly designed questions (see Table 1).

Table 1 Outcomes of patient satisfaction questionnaires
Outcomes	Questionnaires	P value
	Lausanne n=727	PJS n=733	Picker n=715	Sequs n=702
Responders (%)	72.8	70.7	69.9	67.8	0.27
Mean time to complete (min)	13.2	12.5	19.3	13.4	<0.001
Responses missing per item (%)	1.1	1.9	3.1	1.6	<0.001
Participants reporting at least one question difficult to comprehend or poorly designed (%)	18.7	18.7	17.2	20.0	0.75
Participants reporting at least one important area not covered (%)	28.9	38.8	28.2	39.1	<0.001
Participants rating questionnaire as excellent on global assessment (%)	11.0	11.9	14.6	11.5	0.37

Authors’ conclusions

No one questionnaire was consistently better than the others; each questionnaire has advantages and disadvantages. All four questionnaires are appropriate for use in patient satisfaction surveys.