Closing the audit loop: a patient satisfaction survey.

A patient satisfaction survey was carried out in a nuclear medicine department of a large acute hospital. Surveys were initially carried out by interview and postal techniques, with approximately 100 responders in each category. The responses to each question were not significantly different for the two types of survey, although overall there was a significantly larger number of dissatisfied responses in the postal survey (22%) compared with the interview study (12%). The postal survey was repeated after 1 year, thus completing the audit loop. A significant reduction in dissatisfied responses has occurred in those areas which had been addressed following the criticisms revealed by the first survey.