OBJECTIVE:
To describe patient satisfaction of their relationship with the family physician, using the PDRQ-9 questionnaire and assess its psychometric properties.
DESIGN:
Cross-sectional study.
SETTING:
Six Primary Care Health centres in the Community of Madrid, Spain.
PARTICIPANTS:
Four hundred and fifty one patients randomly selected from those who had just visited their family physician.
INTERVENTIONS:
Interviews were carried out to collect demographic characteristics, health needs, the accessibility to the service, and the socioeconomic situation of the subjects.
MEASUREMENTS:
The PDRQ-9 responses were collected and a synthetic satisfaction index was constructed. A multivariable model was designed to explain differences in satisfaction.
RESULTS:
The mean satisfaction index was 4.41 (95% CI: 4.33-4.48) on a scale of 1 (the worst) to 5 (the best satisfaction possible), with a median of 4.78 (interquartile range 4.00-5.00). Four of every 10 subjects expressed the maximum possible satisfaction ("ceiling effect"). A single factor explained 75.3% of the variance, with a Cronbach alpha value of 0.952. Age (OR 1.03, 95% CI: 1.02-1.05) and living in rural areas (OR 1.44, 95% CI: 0.94-2.20) were associated with above average satisfaction.
CONCLUSIONS:
Primary care users feel their relationship with their family physicians are very satisfactory, particularly in those who are older and who live in rural areas.
The PDRQ-9 questionnaire shows a high internal consistency, but it is not good enough to discriminate in the upper part of the scale.
2010-03-12
Spa.
Atencion primaria / Sociedad Espanola de Medicina de Familia y Comunitaria
CS San Martín de Valdeiglesias, Area 8 de AP, Servicio Madrileño de Salud, Madrid, España. jmartinefe [at] hotmail.com
Aten Primaria. 2010 Apr;42(4):196-203
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