Development and validation of the satisfaction with pharmacist scale.

Abstract

To assess patients' satisfaction with pharmacists, seven questions were developed with semistructured input from 5 pharmacy practice faculty members and 11 patients with cancer. The study identified 1617 English- and Spanish-speaking patients with cancer or human immunodeficiency virus infection or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome who participated in a multisite validation of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy Scale. Of these, 1124 had seen a pharmacist in the past 7 days and therefore were eligible; 608 spoke English and 516 Spanish. The seven items on the Satisfaction with Pharmacist (SWiP) scale were rated on a five-point Likert scale (0 = not at all to 4 = very much). The reliability of the English and Spanish versions was evaluated by Cronbach's alpha coefficients. The unidimensionality and construct validity were analyzed with the Rasch rating scale model. The alpha coefficients for the English and Spanish versions were 0.90 and 0.92, respectively. Rasch analyses of item responses showed that none of the items in either language was a misfit, which supported their ability to measure a unidimensional construct. Item difficulty plots revealed that no item exhibited differential functioning, indicating that the items performed the same in both languages. The SWiP scale has reliable and valid psychometric properties in English and Spanish and can be used to document the value of the pharmacist-patient relationship. It is easy to administer and is ready for further use and evaluation to determine and document outcomes of pharmaceutical care.