Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a tool to assess parental satisfaction in pediatric intensive care units

Abstract

Objective: To verify the performance of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a tool to assess parental satisfaction in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs).

Methods: The authors conducted an observational cross-sectional multicenter study in the PICUs of 5 hospitals in Brazil. Eligible participants were all parents or legal guardians of PICU-admitted children, aged 18 years or over. The NPS was administered together with the EMpowerment of PArents in THe Intensive Care (EMPATHIC-30), used as the gold standard, and a sociodemographic questionnaire. For analysis, the results were dichotomized into values greater than or equal to the median of the tests. The associations between the 2 tools were evaluated and the distribution of their results was compared.

Results: The parents or legal guardians of 78 PICU-admitted children were interviewed. Of the respondents, 85% were women and 62% were in a private hospital. The median NPS was 10 (IQR, 10-10), and the median EMPATHIC-30 score was 5.7 (IQR, 5.4-5.9). Compared with the gold standard, the NPS had a sensitivity of 100% at all cutoff points, except at cutoff 10, where the sensitivity was slightly lower (97.5%). As for specificity, NPS performance was poorer, with values ranging from 0% (NPS ≥ 5) to 47.4% (NPS = 10).

Conclusions: NPS proved to be a sensitive tool to assess parental satisfaction, but with poor ability to identify dissatisfied users in the sample.

Keywords: EMPATHIC-30; Net Promoter Score (NPS); Pediatric intensive care units; Quality of health care.