Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: To develop a specific questionnaire to evaluate the satisfaction of diabetic patients with the use of glucometers and evaluate their psychometric properties (feasibility, reliability, and validity).

Material and methods: Two stages: i) questionnaire development: a set of 53 items was constructed after a bibliographic review. A panel of six experts and 50 patients concluded a 25-item version of the questionnaire (dimensions: satisfaction, inconvenience, added value, and appearance). ii) Questionnaire validation: 6-month, epidemiological, multicentre, cross-sectional study that recruited 286 adult patients with type 1 or 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) who used a glucometer. Their responses to the questionnaire were collected together with supplementary variables: sociodemographic and clinical, adherence to treatment (Morisky-Green), generic satisfaction with treatment questionnaire, SAT-Q, and also specifically for diabetes, DTQS-s. The questionnaire’s test-retest reliability was evaluated by 51 patients completing the questionnaire 15 days after the first visit.

Results: The mean age (SD) of the sample was 42.70 years (16.25), 55.30% were women and 63.70% presented type I DM. The patients’ mean percentage (S.D.) of HbA1c was 7.82% (1.45). Mean adherence was 7.65 (1.66), the patients had being using a glucometer for a mean time of 6 years, and average glycaemia controls were 3.95 (1.76). 73.50% of the patients had obtained the glucometer from an endocrinologist.

Reliability: Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88 and ranged from 0.61 to 0.82 for the different subscales. The intra-class coefficient of correlation for the total SATIGLU score was 0.75.

Validity: The SATIGLU questionnaire showed a positive, statistically significant correlation with SAT-Q and DTQ9-s scores and the patients’ degree of adherence to treatment.

Conclusions: The SATIGLU questionnaire shows appropriate psychometric properties as an instrument to evaluate patient satisfaction with the use of glucometers.