Patients' Satisfaction with the Quality of Services Provided at the Outpatient Department at Al-Shifa Hospital
Date
2009-01-11
Authors
Naeem Shaban Al-Kariri
نعيم شعبان محمد الكريري
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Al-Quds University
Abstract
Patient's satisfaction regarding health services is an indicator of the quality of the health
care. This study aims to assess the patients' satisfaction with health services provided at
Outpatients' Department at Al-Shifa Hospital.
The design of this study is descriptive, analytical one for eligible subjects. Selfadministered
questionnaire was developed and focused on patient's satisfaction with health
services provided at the Outpatients' Department at Al-Shifa Hospital. Probability
systematic random sample was used in this study and 450 participants were interviewed
with a response rate of 90%. Validity and reliability of the instrument were tested and the
total instrument reliability test (Cronbach's Alpha) was 0.91.
Five dimensions of patients' satisfaction were considered in this study; namely, access to
care, physical environment, patients' expectations, waiting time in addition to information
and interaction. The overall patients' level of satisfaction was 63.9%. The patients'
expectation dimension reported the highest level of satisfaction (68.1%), while, the waiting
time dimension reported the lowest level of satisfaction (58.5%). The study illustrated
important differences in satisfaction in relation to patients' socio-demographic
characteristics, health status and organizational characteristics.
The study revealed that, there were statistically significant differences in the overall
satisfaction with old patients, females, low educated, patients with low income and patients
with chronic diseases are more satisfied than their counterparts (P value less than 0.05). In
contrast, residency place, marital status, number of visits, presence of disability, the
recipient outpatient clinic and the residency place did not show statistically significant
difference on patients' level of satisfaction (P value more than 0.05).
The study recommended that reducing the patients' time in the outpatient clinic,
introducing improvement on existing physical environment of the department and
improving the way of communication and interaction between health care providers and
patients are important factors for improving the patients' level of satisfaction