Objectives: To develop a questionnaire to measure the satisfaction of stomatised patients with healthcare professionals and with the stomal device.
Methods: An initial review of the literature was performed and in meetings with experts, the most relevant items were selected. In a pilot study with patients that had been recently stomatised (three months from intervention), the comprehensibility and discriminatory ability of each item was tested. Items were eliminated on the grounds of frequent "no response" or low correlation with others on the provisional scale (determined by means of Cronbach's alpha).
Results: Following meetings with experts, 12 items were eliminated by reason of irrelevance or low frequency of use. Subsequently by means of administration of the questionnaire to a sample of 72 patients, five more items were selected for elimination. An analysis of the 13 items that remained confirmed an acceptable level of reliability (Cronbach's alpha of 0.917) and also the significant differences in the global scores between the patients who have had stoma for more than three months (higher satisfaction) and patients who had been recently stomatised. The items in the questionnaire referred to aspects of easy and comfort of use of the stoma, as well as satisfaction with information received and interaction with healthcare professionals from the point of view of the patient.
Conclusions: This is the first questionnaire to measure satisfaction with healthcare professionals and the stomal device from the perspective of the stomatised patient. In a subsequent study the other properties of the measurement tool (validity responsiveness and longitudinal validation) will be evaluated.