Patient’s Perception And Satisfaction With Health Care Professionals At Primary Care Facilities In Nigeria

Patient’s Perception And Satisfaction With Health Care Professionals At Primary Care Facilities In Nigeria

Abstract

This study delved patient perception and satisfaction with healthcare professionals at primary care installations in named health installations in Enugu. It can be concluded from the study that perceived quality of care and satisfaction was high in all the three installations. Perceived quality of care was loftiest in the clinic( 100) followed by the health centre(98.1) and also the sanitarium(94.3). Overall satisfaction also followed analogous trend – clinic( 100), health centre(94.3) and sanitarium(93.2).

nevertheless there are aspects of care that need to be bettered. The guests ’ assessment of certain aspects of communication and responsiveness was low among all the health installations especially the health centre. The sanitarium and the health centre endured stock out of certain essential drugs. The waiting time was less respectable to the guests of the sanitarium and the health centre.

Vacuity of all drugs specified in the installation, guests ’ perception of demarcation against them due to of lack of plutocrat and comfort of the staying area are the significant predictors of the perception of quality of care. The most significant predictors of satisfaction are overall perception of quality of care and cleanliness of the installation

Chapter One

Preface

Background of Study

Primary Health Care forms the bedrock of the health- care services of a country. It’s the quality of health care available to the maturity of the population that determines the health status of the country and is the stylish index for the position of social development of the country. The important conditions of Primary Health- Care Services are that they should be Effective with regard to cost, ways and association; readily accessible to those concerned; respectable to the community served; at a reasonable cost. Health- care services should be available in a manner and language that’s suitable to the community and population it serves and accommodating of original traditions and customs, and at a price which the population can go. Case satisfaction has been linked to increased case compliance, durability of care, better clinical issues, and lesser service application and threat operation. Case satisfaction is therefore a crucial marker for the quality of health- care delivery and an important index for evaluation and enhancement of health- care services. Studies of Case Satisfaction in health care began in the USA during the 1950s, the foremost studies tried to identify patient characteristics similar as age, gender, and race to prognosticate patient satisfaction situations( Apostle and Oder 1967; Bertakis etal. 1991). Another group of studies analysed health- care attributes similar as nursing care, croaker care,etc. to identify attributes that impact overall case satisfaction( Ware etal. 1975; Ross etal. 1993; Dansky and Brannon 1996; Oswald etal. 1998). DrVeera Prasad in his relative study of patient satisfaction said that there are five determinants of patient satisfaction.

trustability The capability to perform the engaged service dependably and directly.

Responsiveness The amenability to help the cases and give prompt service.

Assurance The knowledge and courtesy of workers and their capability to convey trust and confidence.

Empathy The provision of caring and personalized attention to cases.

Tangibles The appearance of physical installations, outfit, particular, and communication accoutrements .

A study was carried out to identify which attributes of a primary health- care experience access, staff care and croaker care, and which aspects of each trait are most significant in cases ’ response to the services they admit. Analysis showed that among the three attributes, croaker care was most influential, nearly followed by the staff care, with access having leastinfluence.However, it’s the combination of all these factors that impact patient satisfaction, and need to be assessed to insure a positive experience at the health- care installation.

Unfortunately, while several studies have been carried out which have explored the parameters of patient satisfaction in tertiary care centers and large hospitals in India, veritably little attention has been paid to studies of patient satisfaction at the primary care position, especially GPs running solo conventions, which form the bulk of private primary care services.

Measuring customer or case satisfaction has come an integral part of health installation operation strategies across the globe( Smith and Engolbracht, 2001). The success of a health installation depends on customer comprehensions of health care quality because of the impact it has on customer satisfaction grounded on services handed by health professionals. Satisfaction of guests not only ensures compliance with treatment and instructions about their illness, but also influences application of health installations.

Turhal and others( 2002) made a comment that ― in the last 20 times the old way of treating cases in the” complaint centred” approach has changed to” patient centred” style. Now cases have further influence toward the care they admit and they’re given occasion to change the way care is delivered to them. Health care in Nigeria has over the times been characterized by poor provider- customer relationship which has made guests and some health providers to raise serious enterprises. Provision of high quality customer- centred care is thus one of the topmost challenges of the Ministry of Health( MOH). As a result of the enterprises raised by guests and health providers, the issue of perfecting quality of health care attracted serious attention in 1989 during the Regional Directors ’ conference. posterior to the conference, perfecting the quality of health care attracted attention of both policy makers and health care professional groups and sweats have been made to identify crucial issues for perfecting the quality of health care throughout the country.

Statement of the problem

Health installations at all situations of care are needed to give quality health care that meets the prospects of their guests. This is still, not so throughout the country. Provider- customer relationship has been veritably poor performing in growing concern among guests about the quality of care. The MOH( 2007) in its public health policy document identifies complaints from druggies about the vituperative and humiliating treatment by the health providers and dearths of outfit, consumables inventories and some essential medicines as some of the challenges of the health services. The public health policy document reveals that some health installations are effective, delivering high quality services and being responsive to the requirements of their guests, but numerous are not.

To cover and ameliorate the quality of care by health professionals in the health installations, the Nigerian Health Services recommends customer satisfaction checks by health installations at least doubly in a time.

Indeed though, some customer satisfaction checks have been conducted, periodic reports show that it has not been suitable to do it twice a time. It’s thus not known how sustainable quality enhancement sweats have been throughout theyear.The health centres and conventions in the country haven’t been conducting customer satisfactionsurveys.The position of quality of care by professionals is thus not known in these installations, hence this study on patient perception and satisfaction with healthcare professionals at primary health care installations.

defense

customer satisfaction data is an important tool for qualityimprovement.This study describes customer perception and satisfaction with health care professionals as a means of measuring quality of health care in Enugu. In addition to assessing customer perception and satisfaction with services handed by health professionals, it also elicits which service areas are precedences for enhancement. It’ll also help bridge the gap between guests ‘ prospects and the factual service they admit. Seeking guests ’ opinions of the current position of service will insure customer focus in service delivery. This is necessary in icing high position of quality of service delivery.

This study will also help the health installations to initiate programs and programs that can lead to bettered customer- provider relationship which will affect in increased application and profit generation. It’ll also serve as a birth study, since no similar study describing the quality of care across the colorful situations of care has been done in the area.

Exploration Objects

The general ideal of this study is to describe patient perception and satisfaction with healthcare professionals at primary health care installations in Enugu. The specific objects are

1. To describe and compare the perceived quality of care at the colorful situations of care in Enugu

2. To determine the position of customer satisfaction with health care professionals in the health installations

3. To identify the predictors of perception of quality of care and customer satisfaction in the health installations

Exploration Questions

The following exploration questions guided the study;

1. What’s the perceived quality of care at the colorful situations of care in Enugu?

2. What’s the position of customer satisfaction with health care professionals in the health installations?

3. What are the predictors of perception of quality of care and customer satisfaction in the health installations?

Limitation to Study

The major limitations of the study were

1. Interviews and FGDs were held on the health installation demesne. This might beget guests to have the tendency to give advanced conditions for fear of victimization indeed though they were assured of confidentiality.

2. Canvassing caretakers of cases lower than 15 times of age rather than the cases themselves might not give the true picture since their views may be different from that of the cases themselves.

3. Only one health centre and one clinic were tried due to resource constraints.