Patient Satisfaction with the Nursing Care Quality in a Home Health Care Center in Madinah Region, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Article

Abstract

Home health care services are provided to more than 2,900 patients in the Madinah region in Saudi Arabia, and vary according to the patient’s needs and level of care required. The home health care center in Medina alone provides services to more than 700 patients. Nursing care is considered one of the main pillars of home health care, and all home health care centers depend on nurses to provide service. This makes the quality of nursing services in home health care one of the most important means of identifying the level of service quality in general in-home health care. In this article, the researcher aimed to determine the quality of nursing services based on patient and family caregiver satisfaction with the services provided; identify the most important factors that affect patients’ and family caregivers’ level of satisfaction; and determine whether there is a relationship between service quality, patient satisfaction, and improvement of the patient’s health in general. A cross-sectional method was used in this article; the Home Nursing Quality Scale (HNQS) questionnaire was translated into Arabic and distributed to participants via Google Forms. There were 267 participants in this article; the majority were female (54.7%), whereas only 45.3% were male. The patients’ and family caregivers’ level of education was one of the strongest factors affecting the extent of patient satisfaction, where satisfaction decreased with an increase in education level, i.e., patients and family caregivers with postgraduate degrees had mean scores of 3.83 (standard deviation [SD] = 1.17) and patients and family caregivers with primary degree had mean scores of 4.68 (SD = 0.76). Likewise, the age factor also affected the level of satisfaction: older patients and family caregivers were more satisfied, where patients and family caregivers aged >65 years had mean scores of 4.84 (SD = 0.37). There was a strong and positive relationship between nursing care quality and level of satisfaction among patients and family caregivers with home health care, which reflected the health status of the patients. Moreover, nursing managers and home health care managers must implement interventions to empower patients and caregivers to be more aware and capable of understanding the level of quality in the care provided by home health care nurses. Keywords: Patient Satisfaction, Nursing Care, Quality DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/100-08 Publication date: May 31 st 2022