Patient Satisfaction with Health Services at the Emergency Center of the University Clinic in Prishtina.

Abstract

Purpose: Safety is a fundamental principle in patient care as well as a key component of quality management of health services. Improving patient safety requires constant energy, including all individuals who have direct or indirect contact with the patient. This means enhancing the approach towards the patient, modifying the workplace, improving the performance of the staff and redesigning systems with the aim of reducing patient risk. This approach involves almost all disciplines and actors, therefore, a complex approach in identifying the gaps, new policy making and policy implementation strategies by the health service providers and the relevant institutions were investigated for this study. Research method: In this prospective study, two questionnaires were compiled: one was designed to address patients seeking health services at the Emergency Center in Prishtina, whereas the second questionnaire was designed for the Emergency Center staff in order to identify the relationship between employees, management staff and error reporting problems. A nurse and a resident doctor in the Emergency Center who worked in shifts were engaged for this purpose in order to survey patients in different parts of the day for 24 hours. Results: The results of this study show that most of the patients who come to the Emergency Center are transported either by family members or by a bystander. These patients can suffer many unintentional injuries from inadequate and unprofessional transportation. Moreover, multiple visits coming directly from the accident site or from home indicate that there are problems with the referral system from Primary Health Care (PHC) levels. In addition, numerous injuries to the head region indicate a need for treatment by a dentist who is specialized in head and neck medicine. Conclusions: There is a need to reorganize the working hours for the employees of the Emergency Center. Increasing the capacity of the primary health care level would reduce the burden of the Emergency Center from the interventions, which can be easily addressed at lower levels. Ongoing professional training as well as trainings focused on stress management, time pressure control, and the relationship between health care providers would significantly improve the level of patient safety in the Emergency Center.