Background: As client experience becomes an established quality domain in veterinary care, owner appraisals of postoperative recovery may influence downstream behavioral intentions. In feline medicine, postoperative recovery in daily life is commonly inferred from owner observations using structured owner-reported outcome measures, where patients cannot self-report.
Aim: To examine how client experience (CE), modeled as a reflective-reflective higher order construct, relates to owner-perceived postoperative functional recovery and how CE and owner-reported outcomes (ORO) predict client loyalty (CL) and recommendation likelihood (RL), including ORO's mediating role.
Methods: Owners of cats who underwent orthopedic surgery at an Indonesian feline referral clinic completed a cross-sectional online questionnaire (N = 153). ORO was assessed using the 9-item Feline Musculoskeletal Pain Index short form (FMPI-sf) as an owner-reported proxy of postoperative function and comfort (not a direct measure of radiographic healing). The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling in SmartPLS 4, applying a disjoint two-stage approach for the CE higher-order construct and bootstrapping for inference.
Results: CE positively predicted ORO (β = 0.677, p < 0.001) and had direct effects on CL (β = 0.486, p < 0.001) and RL (β = 0.709, p < 0.001). ORO predicted CL (β = 0.451, p < 0.001) but not RL (β = 0.144, p = 0.089). ORO partially mediated the effect of CE on CL (β = 0.305, p < 0.001), whereas it did not mediate RL (β = 0.097, p = 0.118). The model explained substantial variance in ORO (R2 = 0.458), CL (R2 = 0.737), and RL (R2 = 0.662).
Conclusion: In feline orthopedic pathways, perioperative communication, empathy, pain management guidance, and shared decision-making are clinically relevant care-process targets associated with stronger owner-perceived recovery and higher continuity intentions. Recommendation intention appeared to be primarily experience-driven rather than recovery-driven. The findings should be interpreted in light of the cross-sectional, single-clinic design and the use of FMPI-sf as a postoperative proxy measure.
