Patient satisfaction in emergency medicine

ABSTRACTPATIENT SATISFACTION IN EMERGENCY MEDICINEIsmail TOGUNResidency Thesis, Department of Emergency MedicineSupervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cuma YILDIRIMDecember 2007, 71 pagesThe purpose of this study is to detect demographic characteristics of patients who come to Gaziantep University Şahinbey Research and Application Hospital Emergency Department, to determine factors that effect patients satisfaction, and to determine factors which is associated with satisfaction-dissatisfaction of patients.This clinical study was carried out between 1 November 2006 and 31 January 2007 in our Gaziantep University Şahinbey Research and Application Hospital Emergency Department. All adult patients who are older than 16 years old were included in the study. Data were collected about demographic characteristics, care characteristics and information about their satisfactions. The questionnaire asked about the reason for preferring our centre, who met them at emergency department, attitude and experience of the doctors and nurses, technical equipment and cleanness of hospital, satisfaction about waiting time for completing treatment at emergency department, information given to the patient about what is going to happen during the treatment, patient?s perception of satisfaction about waiting time for investigation. They were also asked satisfaction about all of care at emergency department, reasons for dissatisfaction; whether they would take an information about observation after discharging from emergency department and satisfaction about this; whether they would prefer receiving care in our emergency department again and how likely they would be to recommend our emergency department to others for emergency care and given or not given recipe to them. The data were analyzed using the SPSS 13.0.During this study period, a total of 1454 patients were included to the study. General satisfactions of patient about all of the care at emergency department were, 1021 (70.2%) patients were satisfied, 308 (21.2%) patients were partially satisfied and 125 (8.6%) patients were dissatisfied. Attitude and experience of doctors and nurses, technical equipment and cleanness of hospital, given information at emergency department, perception time at emergency department, waiting time for examinations and laboratory result, given recipe to patients, appealing time, style of admitting to emergency department were found statistically meaningful on the effect of general satisfaction. General satisfaction of patients were indicated a correlation with preferring our hospital and advising to others at future. Other parameters were not statistically meaningful on the effect of general satisfaction.In conclusion; attitude of doctors was found to be the major factors that effect patient?s satisfaction. The other important factors that effect the patient?s satisfaction were attitude of nurses, information given to patients about what is going to happen during the treatment at emergency department, cleanness of hospital and give information to patients about observation after discharging hospital. The most important factors that effect negatively the general satisfaction was found insufficient technical equipment.Key words: Emergency department, Patient satisfaction, Dissatisfaction