Patients' satisfaction and their perception of the pharmacist.
OBJECTIVE
To explore the relationships between patients' satisfaction and (1) the level of pharmaceutical care services received, (2) patients' perceptions of the personal attention paid to them by the pharmacist, and (3) patients' perceptions of the pharmacist's ability to help them manage their asthma and prevent asthma-related problems.


METHODS
Exploratory study using mail or telephone survey methods.


METHODS
Asthma patients (n = 250) enrolled in one of two Florida managed care organizations.


METHODS
Predictor variables were level of pharmaceutical care and patients' perceptions of personal attention and their pharmacist's ability to help them control their asthma. Outcome variable was patients' overall satisfaction with the care they received from their pharmacist.


RESULTS
The direct causal effects of level of care (standardized regression coefficient, beta = 0.07) and patients' perception of pharmacists' ability to help (beta = 0.01) on satisfaction were nonsignificant. Only personal attention had a significant direct path coefficient to patient satisfaction (beta = 0.63). Although the level of care was associated with patient satisfaction (r = 0.32), its direct effect was not significant because of its joint association (r = 0.27) with personal attention. Patients' satisfaction was associated with the level of pharmaceutical care and their perception of the pharmacist's ability to help them with their asthma. However, personal attention from the pharmacist was most influential.


CONCLUSIONS
Patients may be less able to judge the technical quality of the care they receive, but they do judge their social interaction with the pharmacist. Pharmacy professionals must increase patients' awareness of the value of pharmaceutical care services and make it important to their judgment of satisfaction.
Ried
L D
LD
Department of Pharmacy Health Care Administration, College of Pharmacy, University of Florida, Gainesville 32610-0496, USA. Ried@cop.ufl.edu
Wang
F
F
Young
H
H
Awiphan
R
R
D001249:Asthma / Q000628:therapy*; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D005431:Florida; D006801:Humans; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010593:Pharmaceutical Services; D010595:Pharmacists; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations