Client Satisfaction Among Attendees of General Hospitals in Lagos State
1.0 Summary of proposal
This study proposes an evidence-based research work on the topic “client satisfaction among attendees of General Hospitals in Lagos state”. The researcher focused on Lagos State General Hospital. This study provided three research objectives, from which will birth three research questions that will guide the execution of the study. The problem that led to this study is that poor health service perceptions by clients have been linked to some patients bypassing public hospitals for an alternative provider and spreading negative word of mouth which affects potential clients and growth of the facility (Nwankwo et al., 2011). Additionally, in Lagos State General Hospital, over 50% of patients rated the quality of the health services provided as poor (Wanjau and Wangari, 2019). This study also provides the method that will be used to carryout out this research.
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Background information
The need for continuous improvement of quality and safety in the provision of patient care has become self-evident (Creel et al., 2019).
Healthcare is the fastest growing service in both developed and developing countries (Dey et al., 2016). In the recent years, health systems have changed the way of thinking and delivering care: patients have become the center of the overall process and new organizational models are being applied in order to provide patient-oriented services. The mission of health systems has expanded to meet the population’s health needs and expectations regarding how patient should be treated by providers. Strategies focused on service quality have been developed since the year 2000s (WHO, 2000). In this context, patient’s feedback has become an important source to evaluate the capability of health systems in order to respond to patients’ needs.
Understanding satisfaction and service quality have, for some considerable time, been recognized as critical to developing service improvement strategies. Since 1990s, health care systems have adopted multidimensional systems to evaluate the results achieved including also indicators related to patient experience and satisfaction with service quality. Improving quality in health facilities is a strategy used in developing countries to reduce communicable diseases, which contributes significantly to attainment of strategic goals of the health system (Girma et al., 2018). Patients are now regarded as healthcare customers, recognizing that individuals consciously make the choice to purchase the services and providers that best meet their healthcare needs (Wadhwa, 2019). Related to this, healthcare quality and patient satisfaction are two important health outcome and quality measure (Zineldin, 2016).
Literature identifies patient satisfaction as a super-ordinate construct and considered perceived service quality as an antecedent of satisfaction (Badri et al., 2017). Past studies have observed a causal relationship between perceived service quality and patient satisfaction (Woodside et al., 1989; Choi et al., 2014). According to Caha (2019), service quality in a hospital is a strong influencer of customer satisfaction and positive attitude that the clients of that hospital have towards the hospital. This positive attitude towards the hospital, its staff and its competence influences its success in the society. Improvement of competence of hospital staff, hospital costs in relation to value received and quality of health facilities in the hospital are all factors that are considered by clients to gauge their satisfaction with the hospital. Objective measure of service quality may be different from customer perception which makes customer perception to be the right indicator overriding objective measures. Every service organization therefore should use customer perception as its measure to establish the quality level it provides in the market (Caha, 2019).
Patients’ satisfaction assesses the fulfillment of a need or desire or allayment of anxiety in respect to the quality of health care received. Patients’ satisfaction refers to patients’ valued judgments and subsequent reactions to what they perceive in the health care environment just before, during, and after the course of their stay or clinical visit (Nasir et al., 2019). It is an important outcome measure for health services. Data on patient satisfaction are the key indicators for the quality of care and treatment delivered by the physicians, paramedical staff and the hospital as a whole (Wadwha, 2019). This could be considered in the context of contentment with services, and expectations in health care. Most often, expectation comes with efficiency of services received and this is important in their satisfaction.
Patient’s satisfaction is influenced by a number of factors and according to Peprah (2014), the following factors play a critical role in the satisfaction of patients; the attitudes of nurses toward patients, the capacity to deliver prompt service without wasting time, ability to disseminate information to patients and the availability of up to-date equipment. Others include the hospital’s ability to render reliable service, the patience of the doctor to clearly explain what was wrong with patients before giving treatment, providing patients with detail information about their medication, and attractiveness and cleanliness of the hospital.
Meeting the needs of the patient and creating healthcare standards are imperative to achieving high quality services (Ramachandran and Cram, 2015). This makes a patient to be the center of healthcare’s quality agenda (Badri et. al., 2017). Customers determine the perceived or cognitive value of service based on their experience with the service delivered. Patients’ expectations, service delivery process and service outcome have an impact on perceived health service quality. However, the Nigerian public health sector, like other developing countries, is plagued by uneven demand and negative service-quality perceptions. The situation is compounded by absent essential medications, long journeys to service delivery points and long wait times.
Health system factors play an important role in shaping clients’ preconceived negative attitudes and dissatisfaction with healthcare services, providers and healthcare itself hence the need to evaluate the quality of care has to be evaluated also through the patient’s eyes. Therefore, the study aims at determining client satisfaction among attendees of General Hospitals in Lagos state.
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