An instrument to assess patient satisfaction with physical therapy in the public health system

Abstract

This study consisted in developing and validating an instrument to measure users satisfaction with publicly offered physical therapy services
and to identify the emerging dimensions of “patient satisfaction”. The full
process is here described, from the search for indicators to a pilot survey, a survey with patients, and the questionnaire psychometric analysis. Cultural suitableness was assessed by means of two assessing panels with health providers and users. The sample was made up by 124 patients then receiving physical therapy in the public health system of Natal, RN. In the analysis of the results reliability and validation, Cronbach alpha (a=0.95) showed a great instrument internal consistency. Content validity was found to be regular according to psychometric patterns of patients’ satisfaction. The factorial analysis of results pointed to five dimensions, of which the one linked to therapist-patient relationship was found to gather most satisfaction predictors. This instrument, now made available to the population and specifically to health providers, proved useful to optimise the satisfaction of patients who attend physical therapy services in the public health system.