Internists' Satisfaction with Clinical Laboratories Services of Basra City: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Background: The quality of laboratory services is a very important tool for patient care. Medical decisions in diagnosing disease and providing appropriate treatment mainly depends on the results of laboratory tests jointly with the clinical examination and interview. So this study was conducted to assess the confidence of internists in laboratory services and to analyze the strengths and limitations imposed on these services. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted among 53 respondent internists from government and private sector laboratories in Basra Governorate from 1st of April to 30th of May 2022. This study included doctors specialized in internal medicine in private and public hospitals and clinics. A structured, self-administered questionnaire was used, which consisted of a 2-5 point Likert scale questions with 22 survey principles and two main sections: personal information and data on services provided by laboratories. All participants were informed of the contents of the questionnaire form and gave consent. The collected data were fed to a database made through IBM SPSS statistics for Windows, version 24 to obtain statistical analyzes. After securing validity, reliability analysis was carried out and Alpha Cronbach (0.732) was considered reliable. The average score for each item on the scale was calculated, and an overall degree of physicians' confidence in laboratory services was calculated. Results: Respondents' mean age was 50.62 years and the mean experience years was 20. Most of the respondents were male internists nearly half of them held a doctorate or the Arab/Iraqi board for medical specializations' degrees. The average general-confidence of participants was 58.5%. Nearly half of the internists were satisfied with the laboratory services provided by government hospitals in Basra Governorate. However, there are some services that need attention. For the private sector, mostly (84.9%) of participants preferred private sector laboratories. Conclusion: All the doctors who were included in the study were convinced with services provided by the private sector laboratories, and relationships between internal medicine specialists and laboratory staff were good, which may have a positive impact on the provision of services.