Abstract
BackgroundIt is often felt that developing countries need to improve their quality of healthcare provision. This study hopes to generate data that can help managers and doctors to improve the standard of care they provide in line with the wishes of the patients.MethodsIt was a cross sectional study carried out at a major tertiary care hospital of Karachi. Patients between the ages of 18 and 80 years admitted to the hospital for at least one day were included. Patients in the maternity, psychiatry and chemotherapy wards and those in the ICU/CCU were excluded. A pretested, peer reviewed translation of a validated patient satisfaction scale developed by the Picker Institute of Europe was administered.ResultsA total of 173 patients (response rate: 78.6 %) filled the questionnaire. Patient satisfaction was at levels comparable to European surveys for most aspects of hospital care. However, nearly half the patients (48%) felt they had to wait too long to get a bed in the hospital after presenting to the ER. 68.6% of the patients said that they were never asked for views on the quality of care provided. 20% of the patients did not find anyone in the staff to talk to about their worries and fears while 27.6% felt that they were given emotional support to only some extent. Up to one third of the patients said they were not provided enough information regarding their operative procedures beforehand.ConclusionAlthough several components of patient care equal the quality levels of the west, many sections require considerable improvement in order to improve health care provision. The healthcare team needs to get more involved with the patients, providing them greater support and keeping them informed and involved with their medical treatment. Efforts should be made to get regular feedback from the patients.
Highlights
It is often felt that developing countries need to improve their quality of healthcare provision
Provision of services in line with the wishes and needs of patients is central to a humane health care system
Society has long acknowledged the importance of the views of public in developing the very services provided to them [1] and in the case of the health care system, patients have been found to be aware of health issues to the extent that they have been described as "expert witnesses" to the health care process [2,3]
Summary
It is often felt that developing countries need to improve their quality of healthcare provision. Among the other aspects of care assessed in the ER, only 6% of patients felt a complete lack of privacy while being managed, while nearly 41% were dissatisfied to some degree by the level of privacy afforded to them. The ethoses of extending privacy to the patients during examination and treatment have been primarily adopted from the west and doctors in this part of the world possess an attitude of paying much less emphasis on this area than their counterparts in the west. This is in spite of the fact that the society in Pakistan is more conservative and patients especially females prefer complete privacy. Nearly half the patients (48%) felt they had to wait too long to get a bed in the hospital
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