Background The ambulatory dispensation area is one of the most important sections of the hospital pharmacy. Treatment of several pathologies, such as oncology disease, hepatitis C virus, human immunodeficiency virus and more, are dispensed in this area, where the pharmacist has total responsibility for patient satisfaction.

Purpose Outpatient satisfaction after implementing an improvement cycle.

Material and methods All patients who attended the outpatient unit of pharmacy and who agreed to participate were asked to complete a satisfaction survey during the first half of 2014. After a cycle of improvement, when facilities were improved, a system of timeouts was implemented and staff training increased, the same surveys were conducted during the first half of 2015. Surveys consisted of 14 items and several aspects were scored: facilities, waiting time, kindness of staff, information explained by the pharmacist and overall satisfaction, on a scale of 1–10.

Results 72 surveys were conducted, 38 pre-intervention and 34 after the intervention. Regarding the average score obtained in the pre-intervention phase, the following scores were obtained: 5.7 for facilities, 6.4 for waiting times, 8.4 for kind staff, 7.5 for information explained by the pharmacist and 7.5 for overall satisfaction.

After the improvement cycle, the following scores were obtained: 8.1 for facilities, 6.9 for waiting times, 9.3 for kind staff, 9 for information explained by the pharmacist and 9 for overall satisfaction.

Improvements in the scores were: +2.4 (p < 0.05) for facilities, +0.3 (p > 0.05) for waiting times, +0.9 (p > 0.05) for kind staff, +1.5 (p < 0.05) for information explained by the pharmacist and +2 (p < 0.05) for overall satisfaction

Conclusion The facilities obtained the lowest score in the pre-intervention surveys, but showed the greatest increase after the improvement cycle. The improvement after implementing a system of waiting time was not significant, which led to a new cycle of improvement focused on that aspect. In general, the overall satisfaction of patients was positive after implementing the improvement cycle.

No conflict of interest.