Background and purpose: Although patient satisfaction is an important indicator of the quality of care received in hospitals, no reliable and valid Arabic comprehensive inpatient satisfaction survey has been published. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of an Arabic patient satisfaction survey.
Methods: A cross-sectional design was used where 1,339 randomly selected patients were interviewed by phone. The questionnaire was adopted and from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, refined and tested over a 4-year period.
Results: Item-item correlations for the 22 items on the survey ranged from .52 to .92, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was .87. Construct and predictive validity were also adequate.
Conclusion: The survey is recommended for use in hospitals in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries to facilitate benchmarking and quality improvement.