Background Customer satisfaction is characterised by its complexity and highly subjectivity in hospitals. Indeed, experience has shown that Conventional Customer Satisfaction Indicators (CCSIs) which have proved their relevance in many areas, may not be suitable in hospitals.

Purpose To determine the limits of CCSIs in hospitals.

Material and methods This is a descriptive study of customers and their needs in hospitals followed by a critical analysis of CCSI. As the model presented, we studied direct customers of our Hospital Pharmacy (HP).

Data on pharmacy customers, their needs and CCSIs for their evaluation were extracted from our pharmacy procedures booklet and quality manual, as well as from the complaints register and the satisfaction questionnaires completed by the customers concerned.

Results Direct customers of HP are: Care Units (CUs), administrative department, financial department and suppliers.

The table below illustrates pharmaceutical needs of the first category of customers (CUs), CCSIs used and their possible deficiencies:

Conclusion Critical analysis of CCSIs in hospitals allowed us to identify many deficiencies. These findings will be used to develop new indicators that are more appropriate for the hospital context. For example we can imagine introducing an Index for Request Adequacy (IRA) to adjust the conventional RSR: Adjusted RSR = [Quantity of dispensed drugs/(Quantity of requested drugs × IRA*)] × 100.

*0 < IRA ≤ 1 (The IRA must lie between 0 and 1).

References and/or acknowledgements No conflict of interest.