Abstract
Introduction
Patients’
satisfaction studies are useful in enabling healthcare service providers with
information on how to identify with ease patients who are likely to disenrol;
identify which areas of services need to be revitalized, effectively compare
different healthcare programs/systems, evaluate the quality of healthcare
delivery services as well as develop measures to increase utilization of
healthcare services. It is also a systematic assessment of patients'
satisfaction is an important element to design the marketing strategy for
health care services over time which will enable hospital management to
identify the points of strength and weakness, relative to competitors, and
consequently investing the available resources in the dimensions that improve
the quality of service delivery and patient satisfaction.
Method
This
is a cross sectional descriptive study that was conducted from October to
November, 2017 which involved the use of
quantitative data administered as interviewer guide to two hundred and ten (210)
in-patients at the various wards of University of Abuja Teaching Hospital,
Gwagwalada, Abuja. The descriptive
statistics - frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviations were used to
summarise the items of the questionnaire. Specifically, the mean and standard
deviation were used for the Likert scale items. The Chi-Square Test of
Independence was the inferential statistics used. Analysis was done using SPSS 16 stats.
Results
Findings revealed a satisfaction level of 59%.
Results further showed that 46.7%, 41.4% and 43.3% of respondents respectively
assessed cost of healthcare services, healthcare providers’ interaction with
patients and technical aspect of care respectively to be good for. For
accessibility of healthcare services and interpersonal aspect of care, 46.2%
and 43.3% of respondents respectively assessed it to be poor as against 41% and
41.9% of respondents who assessed them to be good. Findings equally showed that
there is significant relationship between technical aspect care, health providers’
interaction and patients’ satisfaction and patients satisfaction with
healthcare while no relationship was established between patients satisfaction,
cost of healthcare services and interpersonal aspect of care.
Conclusion
This study found relationship between technical aspect
care, health providers’ interaction and patients’ satisfaction and patients’
satisfaction with healthcare. An understanding of
the roles played by these indices in patients’ satisfaction will help care
providers to be aware of
the importance of good interpersonal skills in the application of medical
knowledge and expertise in the provision of health care.
Recommendations
Based
on the findings of the study, we recommend that the management of University of
Abuja Teaching Hospital should work together to enhance their responses to patient’s requests and enquiries,
treat patients with high emotion and kindness, and improve tangible assets of
the hospitals. By doing so, the hospital will make the patients satisfied with
its services, and in turn improve their willingness
to recommend the hospitals' services to others. There is also need to improve
on the current level of student’s satisfaction while effort should be made to
address the domains of dissatisfaction.
