DEVELOPMENT OF A SATISFACTION QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CANCER PATIENTS IN TURKEY - TüRK？YE'DEK？ KANSER HASTALARI ？？？N MEMNUN？YET ANKET？ GEL？？T？RME

Purpose is to develop and validate a novel patient satisfaction questionnaire for Turkish cancer patients. A questionnaire has been constructed. The survey questions relate to patient satisfaction with healthcare providers, medical care received and hospitals, in addition to questions exploring the expectations of the patients about advanced care. 710 cancer patients participated in the survey from eight public hospitals in Ankara. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis have been employed to verify the scale dimensions. A hypothetical model was evaluated by structural equation modelling to determine the adequacy of goodness-of-fit to sample data. The exploratory factor analysis identified three interpretable dimensions which explained 92 per cent of the variance for the patient satisfaction. The subscales derived from these factors were satisfaction from healthcare providers; satisfaction from hospital and satisfaction from health service. Each subscale had acceptable to excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.70–0.95). Structural equation modelling resulted in a sufficient model fit of 19 items within three domains. This study developed and validated a reliable patient satisfaction instrument for cancer patients in Turkey. The instrument showed excellent psychometric properties, thus it can be incorporated into an existing hospital quality monitoring system to monitor patient satisfaction