Level of Compassionate Health Care Service Provision and Its Associated Factors Among Health Professionals Working in Public Hospitals of Addis Ababa: Health Professional's Perspective

Abstract

Background: Compassionate health care service is important for good clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. However, complaints of non-compassionate care became very familiar and popular grievance of the community over the health care system. The aim of this study was to assess the level of compassionate health care service provision and its associated factors among health professionals working in public hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: A facility based cross sectional study was conducted among six public hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Simple random sampling and systematic sampling methods were applied to select hospitals and each study participants respectively. Data were collected from 400 respondents using a self-administered structured questionnaire. The mean of compassionate health care was taken as the cut point to label respondent as good and poor compassionate health care service provider. Multivariate logistic regressions were done to determine the associated factors for compassionate care provision. Variables with p values <0.05 at the multivariable analysis were considered as significantly associated with compassionate care provision. Results: A total of 400 health professionals from 6 hospitals were participated in this study. Only 48.0% of health care professionals provided good compassionate care. Learn to be compassionate (AOR=5.083; CI 95% 2.69, 9.58); patient and their family realistic expectation (AOR= 2.24; CI 95% 1.07, 4.66) were found to be significantly associated with good compassionate health care provision. Conclusions and recommendations: Good compassionate health care service provision in Addis Ababa hospitals was very low. Teaching health science and medical students to be compassionate and ensuring health care clients to have realistic expectation is important to farther improve compassionate health care service provision. Funding Information: Debre-Berhan University covered the funding for this study. Declaration of Interests: The authors declare that they have no any competing interests to publication. Ethics Approval Statement: Ethical clearance was obtained from Collage of Health Science Debreberhan University research ethics committee in a letter Ref DBUMF05-009. Permission letter was obtained from the selected hospitals. Informed and written consent was obtained from each study participants.