Objective To analyse the factors leading to greater satisfaction among patients attending the outpatient hospital pharmacy (OPh).

Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted of patients attending the OPh of a 1250-bed university hospital. A self-administered questionnaire for measuring outpatients' satisfaction was developed. Global satisfaction was measured on a scale of 1 to 10. Indices of perceived quality for accessibility, interpersonal professional–patient relationship and the convenience of the process were modelled through a principal component analysis using varimax rotation. The relationship between the principal components and overall satisfaction was evaluated using regression analysis.

Results A questionnaire-based survey was conducted between May and June 2015. A total of 509 valid responses (86.9% response rate) were collected from the OPh. The overall satisfaction score was 7.81 (95% CI 7.59 to 8.04). The principal component analysis produced two components that explained 62.1% of the variance. The first component (CP1) contained questions related to the adequacy of the resources and services. The second component (CP2) contained questions about interpersonal professional–patient relationship. An additional unit in the CP2 was associated with a 3.23 increased risk of having higher satisfaction scores, while an increase of an additional unit in CP1 was associated with a 1.93 increased risk of having higher satisfaction scores.

Conclusions Our study shows that the factor which predicts the satisfaction of patients who come to the OPh is the quality of care provided by pharmacists—in particular, information provided, resolution of doubts, personal attention and time devoted to the patient.