Abstracts

Rationale: Patient satisfaction with treatment is a key indicator for evaluating health care service needs, quality of care, and efficacy of interventions. Due to the unique physical and psychosocial complexities of epilepsy surgery, generic satisfaction scales are insufficient in capturing patients’ experiences and perceptions about satisfaction with the procedure. With the overall aim of creating a scale to measure patient treatment satisfaction with epilepsy surgery, focus groups were conducted to identify key themes relevant to patient satisfaction.Methods: Patients were recruited from the Calgary Epilepsy Program outpatient clinics. Eligibility criteria included: >18 years old at the time of epilepsy surgery in Calgary, Canada; had the capacity to provide consent; and English language fluency at grade 8 reading level. Patients that solely underwent diagnostic procedures were excluded. Input from caregivers was obtained if required due to patient’s limited ability to communicate. Groups (k=2) were purposively recruited to provide a balance of participants by patient age, gender, and treating epileptologist. Patients represented a spectrum of commonly operated patients. A trained moderator guided the sessions using 8 open-ended questions (Table 1). Member-checking was done at the end of each session to ensure key concepts were identified correctly. Discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed. Qualitative analysis of the discussion content was based on Grounded Theory and used the constant comparison analysis technique to identify themes. Open-coding, using line-by-line analysis, labelled the transcribed sessions into concepts. The concepts were then grouped into categories and summarized. Two researchers involved in the discussions agreed on the categories identified.Results: Two discussion groups were held. Group 1 contained 6 patients and 50% were males. Two patients were accompanied by one caregiver. The second group contained 3 patients and 33% were males. One patient was accompanied by 2 caregivers, and a second patient was joined by his parent. Sessions lasted 2 hours and 1.5 hours, respectively. Open-coding of the transcribed sessions revealed 80 codes that were relevant to measuring patient satisfaction. These were grouped into 12 categories: seizure control, adverse effects, medical care/rehabilitation, use of anti-seizure medication, postoperative recovery, independence, worry, social relationships, ability to drive, confidence, improved physical health, and improved cognitive function. Seizure control, adverse effects, and medical care/rehabilitation were the most frequently endorsed categories. Endorsement frequencies are presented in table 2.Conclusions: Thematic frequency analysis revealed 12 patient-centred themes that are important for measuring patient treatment satisfaction with epilepsy surgery. This work is of critical importance to ensure that the evidence-based scale items are generated to include patients’ perspective. Sources of funding: Alberta Innovates Health Solution