Background : Improving quality of care by increasing continuity, comprehensiveness, and personal relationship of care is one of the important concepts in family medicine. A self-report questionnaire was designed to assess the improvement in quality of care from the above 3 aspects of care
Methods : 27 questions about the 3 concepts were designed by 5 family physicians and were given to 8 other family physicians and 13 residents to evaluate whether each question meant what it was originally intended to mean. or not. It there was a consistency more than 50% between the testees and the developers, those questions were considered to have content validity and were pilot-tested to decide whether they had internal consistency among questions of the same concept or not. Finally were given the chosen questions to patients visiting family medicin clinics of 3 university hospitals. Comparison was made between the new patient group and the old patient group to evaluate whether there were any differences as expected or not.
Results : 24 questions were considered to have content validity among the original 27 questions. Finally were chosen 21 questions with internal consistency consisting of 4 continuity items (a=0.795), 9 comprehensiveness items (a=0.700) and 9 personal relationship items (a=0.616). The scores of total, continuity, comprehensiveness and personal relationship in the old patient group were significantly higher statistically (P<0.01) than those of the new patient group.
Conclusion : our questionnaire could be used to assess the quality of care indirectly in family practice which has a goal of increasing continuity, comprehensiveness and personal relationship in care.