A Study of Satisfaction among Patients visiting Outpatient Department at a Tertiary Care Centre in Delhi

Abstract

Background: Healthcare facilities at any point comprises different stakeholders and various mechanisms which require constant monitoring and feedback for smooth functioning and improvement in services. Feedback from patients is an important aspect and qualitative feedback is often left out. Hence a study was carried out to find patient satisfaction at a tertiary care hospital. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted with a pre-designed bilingual questionnaire with a validated scale for measuring patients’ satisfaction among consenting individuals and caretakers of minor patients visiting OPD of a tertiary care hospital during Jun-Jul 2021. Results: Study participants were predominantly females with a mean age of 43 ± 14.23 years. The majority of study participants were found to be satisfied with “all but one parameter” of the scale for the facilities available at the hospital. Only for the overall cleanliness of the toilets, majority of them were not found to be satisfied. Patients who were asked for follow-up were found to be significantly associated with being overall satisfied with the attending doctor (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Patient satisfaction is an important aspect of healthcare, which is often not considered among other parameters. Healthcare facilities, especially tertiary care hospitals need to assess this component of patient care regularly to improve the quality of services being delivered.