Patient complaint′s profile in a teaching hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Patient satisfaction represents the physician and medical staff's competence and shows the observance of patient's rights and as well the quality of treatment and complaint is expressing dissatisfaction, which requires the accountability and auditing. Now-a-days complaint handling is considered as an essential part of the health care system to promote health standards. Because complaint handling constitutes identifying the main causes of the problem, organizing performances and identifying reliable sources to find the reason of the complaint. In this study, the researchers intend to identify the sources, people, subjects of the complaints and the action taken in this regard in a teaching hospital in Isfahan. Methods: This paper is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The population of the study has been all the cases that have referred to the hospital's complaints unit. For data collection, we observed and checked the existing documents in complaints unit that due to the problems with data recording only the data related to 4 months of the year 2012 and those related to 1 month of 2013 were investigated. Results: On the basis of the results of this study, it can be demonstrated that the major subject of complaints has been the issues of public concerns and welfare of the hospital and the hospital's service quality. Most complaints filed by the patients and their families has been about the physicians and the hospital staff that finally, most of them have been settled in the complaints unit and in the next steps, raising complaint were not reasonable. Conclusion: According to the results it can be said that by detecting the subjects, resources, and people that have been complaining about in the hospital, weaknesses in providing the services were identified and by regarding them they can improve the service providing. Moreover, by sharing the findings from various hospitals, different experiences in this context can be utilized.