Background Revised You're Welcome (YW) quality criteria for adolescent health services (ages 11-19) were published by the Department of Health (England) in April 2011. These are the first national standards to include inpatient services and the first of their kind to be endorsed by the World Health Organisation.

Aims i) To study the relationship between individual YW criteria and overall patient satisfaction in national inpatient surveys.

ii) To identify other factors strongly related to satisfaction in the national surveys which are not included in the YW criteria.

Methods The most recent NHS surveys for which adolescent data were available were identified: the Inpatient Survey 2009 (ages 16-19) and the Young Patients' Survey 2004 (ages 12-17). 29 questions from the two surveys were mapped against YW criteria (Inpatient Survey 15; Young Patient Survey 25; 11 common to both). Logistic regression was used to calculate the odds of increased overall satisfaction when the criteria were met, adjusting for sex and previous use of health services. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were used to identify the twelve questions in each survey which best correlated with overall satisfaction. Consideration of how well these twelve items were included in the YW criteria was made.

Results 7657 12-17 year olds and 2622 16-19 year olds completed the surveys. 28/29 questions were significantly associated with overall satisfaction, (Inpatient Survey: 14/15; Young Patient Survey: 25/25; all p<.01). The exception was whether patients were asked for feedback, where there was a trend to significance (p=.054). Of the twelve questions which best correlated with satisfaction, 10 in each survey were explicitly included or clearly fell within the ethos of YW, one (cleanliness) was implicitly included, while one in each survey (adequate staffing and staff response time after using the call button) was not fully covered. The strongest correlate of overall satisfaction was meeting Criteria 5 (staff training, skills, attitudes and values).

Conclusion This study provides an evidence base for the validity of YW in inpatient services.