Abstract
Quality of care is a complex performance measure of healthcare performance that considers the influence of several contributors. This study enlarges our understanding of how such influences occur. We analyze individual and organizational level characteristics that have a complex relationship with quality of care. We examine specific patterns that lead to both the presence and absence of quality of care using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Our data comes from an online survey of healthcare professionals from a Portuguese university hospital, namely nursing and medical professionals. Our results reveal that combinations of individual-level characteristics, such as the quality of social support among professional peers and the perceived robustness of social networks, contribute to perceptions of quality of care. In addition, the results indicate that combinations of organizational-level characteristics, such as the presence of ethical leadership and the awareness of knowledge management systems, also lead to perceptions of quality of care. The solutions leading to the presence and absence of quality of care are discussed. We conclude that managerial practices in the university hospital should foster informal communication and peer support, given how pervasive their influence is on quality of care, even in circumstances where ethical leadership and awareness of knowledge management systems are absent from the configurations. Additionally, we reveal combinations of both individual-level and organizational-level characteristics that generate the absence of such quality of care, and thus we alert managers for the need to fight such situations.
Highlights
The quality of medical care considers the outcomes of organized healthcare systems and actions aimed at improving the health and well-being of patients [1]
Our research aims to understand the impact of the perceptions of quality in social support, the presence of robust social networks, the healthcare professionals’ awareness of ethical leadership, and the existence of knowledge management systems in healthcare professionals’ perception of the quality of care provided to patients
Developing on the interdependent relationship rationale between characteristics leading to quality of care [38], we argue that perceptions of a robust social network, paired with perceptions of social support between healthcare workers, are conditions related to quality of medical care
Summary
The quality of medical care considers the outcomes of organized healthcare systems and actions aimed at improving the health and well-being of patients [1]. The quality of medical care provided to patients comprises vast phenomena; it is impacted by multilevel factors of influence [2,3,4,5]. Healthcare professionals’ self-assessments and perceptions of quality of care are strong indicators of such outcomes [4,9]. The quality of medical care provided to patients is influenced by healthcare workers’ attitudes and work situations [4,10,11]. The quality of provided care grounded in the work environment has an organizational level of control that can be improved by addressing specific characteristics such as staffing [12,13], organizational preparedness [14,15], and leadership [15,16,17,18,19]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call