How creation of a parent satisfaction questionnaire improved multidisciplinary service delivery in a paediatric day surgery unit.

Auditing patient satisfaction has become a keystone of quality patient centred healthcare. A plethora of patient satisfaction studies exist but only a few studies have been evaluated for their validity, reliability, specificity or psychometric properties. And the majority focus on adult health care. However, if validated tools are not utilised, then inaccurate results could stymie service improvement. The level of satisfaction with the paediatric day surgery service at Tayside Children's Hospital was unknown. Our objective was to measure parent satisfaction with the paediatric day surgery by creating a parent satisfaction questionnaire which has undergone satisfactory testing for validity, reliability, specificity and psychometric properties. A Likert-style questionnaire was constructed through literature review and focus group meetings with professionals, parents and patient groups to establish content validity. Statements worded in positive phrasing were re-worded in negative phrasing to ensure intra-rater reliability. A pilot study was conducted and responses analysed for construct validity and inter-rater agreement. Internal reliability was established using Chronbach's alpha analysis, which produced scores for each part of the questionnaire between 0.7 and 0.9. Overall parent satisfaction was high. 95.48% either strongly agreed or agreed with positively worded statements regarding pre-operative clinic service. In particular 100% satisfaction was reported with the pre-operative phone call which only 70% of participants received. 96.60% strongly agreed or agreed with positive statements regarding service provided on the ward and 87.50% strongly agreed or agreed with positive statements regarding the discharge process. 5% specifically requested improved information giving. In conclusion the parent satisfaction questionnaire was found to have proven validity, reliability, specificity and psychometric properties. Overall parent satisfaction was found to be high. Areas identified for improvement included delivering pre-operative phone call to all parents who have children undergoing day surgery and further exploration of sources and methods of information giving.