Targeted Methods for Measuring Patient Satisfaction in a Radiological Center

Purpose To investigate two event-oriented methods for evaluating patient satisfaction with radiological services like outpatient computed tomography (CT) examinations Materials and Methods 159 patients (55% men 45% women) were asked to complete a questionnaire to provide information about their satisfaction with then examination At first patients were asked to spontaneously recall notably positive and negative aspects (so-called critical incidents critical incident technique = CIT) of the examination Subsequently a flow chait containing all single steps of the examination procedure was shown to all patients They were asked to point out the positive and negative aspects they perceived at each step (so-called sequential incident technique = SIT) Results The CIT-based part of the questionnaire yielded 356 comments (183 positive and 173 negative) which were assigned to one of four categories interaction of staff with patient procedure and organization CT examination and overall setting of the examination Significantly more detailed comments regarding individual aspects of the CT examination were elicited in the second part of the survey which was based on the SIT There were 1413 statements with a significantly higher number of positive comments (n = 939 66%) versus negative comments (n = 474 34% p < 0 001) Conclusion The critical and sequential incident techniques are suitable to measure the subjective satisfaction with the delivery of radiological services such as CT examinations Positive comments confirm the adequacy of the existing procedures while negative comments provide direct information about how service quality can be improved