An extensive review of patient health-care service satisfaction in Bangladesh

Abstract

Patient satisfaction is a useful measure for providing quality indicators in health-care services. Concern over the quality of health-care services in Bangladesh has resulted in a loss of faith in health-care providers, low use of public health facilities, and increased outflows of patients from Bangladesh to hospitals abroad. The main barriers to accessing health services are inadequate services and poor quality of existing facilities, shortage of medicine supplies, busyness of doctors due to high patient load, long travel distance to facilities, and long waiting times once facilities were reached, very short consultation time, lack of empathy of the health professionals, their generally callous and casual attitude, aggressive pursuit of monetary gains, poor levels of competence and occasionally, disregard for the suffering that patients endure without being able to voice their concerns. All of these service failures are frequently reported in the print media. Such failures can play a powerful role in shaping patients’ negative attitudes and dissatisfaction with health-care service providers and health-care itself.