Analysis of factors affecting patients satisfaction in the emergency department

VIII. SUMMARY Objective: To identify factors that affect global satisfaction of the patients referred to the emergency department (ED). Materials and Methods: All consecutive patients who could communicate well and over 18 years of age and were referred to the ED in the 14-day period were enrolled into this cross-sectional analytic study. We questioned and recorded the patients' demographical data, information on the care they received in the ED and level of satisfaction. The patients were inquired specifically on overall satisfaction, such as physicians' attitudes and experience, nurses' attitude and experience, triage, the level of hospital technology and cleanliness, perceived total waiting time, explanation of discharge instruction, explanation of patients' health status and treatment they were going to receive in ED on a 5-point Likert scale. Four and 5 points represented patient satisfaction. Effects of demographic variables such as age, sex, education, marital status, social security status and care they received (i.e. waiting time before initiation of care, mode of arrival, location in the ED, mode of acceptance into the ED, having written prescription on overall satisfaction were analyzed. Results: Survey were obtained from 1019 (91.6%) of 1 1 13patients for analysis during the study. The number of patients who said to be satisfaction that is received care was 962 (94.4%). Satisfaction from experience of the physicians (p=0.000), attitude of the physicians (p=0.000), triage (p=0.000), explanation of health status and treatment (p=0.000), hospital cleanliness (p=0.000) and explanation of discharge instruction (p=0.000) were found statistically significant on overall satisfaction. Overall satisfaction regarding the care received were found significantly related to preferring a certain ED next time (p=O.000). Satisfaction of attitude of the nurses (p=0.035), experience of the nurses (p=0.045) and level of technology used in the hospital (p=0.012) were found statistically significant. Other paremeters were not significant positive effect to patient satisfaction. Conclusion: Properties related to healthcare providers and to the hospital itself were the factors which had the greatest impact on overall satisfaction of the population in the ED. Physicians' level of experience was one of the most prominent factors. On the other hand, patient characteristics were not found to affect satisfaction. 49