Background:
Patient satisfaction is an important indicator of quality of care in hospitals. Reliable and validinstruments to measure clinical and outpatient satisfaction already exist. Recently hospitalshave increasingly provided day care, i.e., admitting patients for one day without an overnightstay. This article describes the adaption of the ‘Core questionnaire for the assessment ofPatient Satisfaction’ (COPS) for general Day care (COPS-D), and the subsequent validationof the COPS-D.
Methods:
The clinical COPS was supplemented with items to cover two new dimensions: Preadmissionvisit and Operation Room. It was sent to a sample of day care patients of fivegeneral Dutch hospitals to investigate dimensionality, acceptability, reliability, construct andexternal validity. Construct validity was established by correlating the dimensions of theCOPS-D with patients’ overall satisfaction.
Results:
The COPS-D was returned by 3802 patients (response 46%). Factor analysis confirmed its’structure: Pre-intake visit, Admission, Operation room, Nursing care, Medical care,Information, Autonomy and Discharge and aftercare (extraction communality 0.63-0.90).The internal consistency of the eight dimensions was good (alpha = 0.82-0.90); the item internalconsistency corrected for overlap was satisfactory (>0.40); all inter-item correlations werehigher than 0.45 but not too high (<0.90). The construct validity of all dimensions was good(r from 0.52-0.62, p < 0.01). The Information dimension had the strongest correlation withoverall day care satisfaction.
Conclusions:
The COPS-D is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring satisfaction with day care. Itcomplements the model of measuring patient satisfaction with clinical and outpatient caregiven in hospitals. It also fulfils the conditions made while developing the clinical andoutpatient COPS: a short, core instrument to screen patient satisfaction.