Health care providers satisfaction with the clinical laboratory service of Nekemte Referral Hospital, Western Ethiopia

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess health care providers' satisfaction with the service provided by the clinical laboratory personnel at Nekemte Referral Hospital, Western Ethiopia to determine the level of satisfaction of health care providers on clinical laboratory services. A cross sectional study was conducted from March to April, 2014 at Nekemte Referral Hospital. The data was collected from 105 randomly selected health professionals. The collected data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 statistical software. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess the association between treatment outcomes and predictor variables. The overall satisfaction for all health care professionals on clinical laboratory services was 62.86%, while specific professional level of satisfaction was 51.2% for nurses, 65.0% for physicians, 75.0% for health officer (Assistant physician) and 85.7% for midwifes. Lack of adequacy of laboratory materials, absence of a timely report of critical values, lack of getting urgent results on time, and inadequacy of test menu on laboratory request forms were areas mentioned as sources of dissatisfaction. The overall degree of customers' satisfaction with laboratory services was good. But the study showed room for improvement. In addition to taking intervention, the root causes of dissatisfaction need to be investigated and means of improving the satisfaction level should be designed and implemented.

Physicians’ satisfaction with clinical laboratory services at public hospitals in Ethiopia: A national survey

“…The current study also showed that 71% of physicians' perceived quality of laboratory service was inconsistent in all working shifts. This finding was consistent with reports from Tanzania, Alexanderia, Gondar University Hospital, Nekemte referral hospital, and selected hospitals in east Ethiopia region [21,22,14,16,18].…”

“…Turnaround time is one of the most noticeable signs of laboratory service and is used by many physicians to judge the quality of the laboratory. Previous studies from Tanzania, Alexanderia, Korea, Gondar University Hospital, Nekemte referral hospital and selected hospitals in east Ethiopia region, and College of American Pathologists reported similar finding that physicians were not satisfied with timely notification of panic results and provision of urgent services in a timely fashion [21,22,15,14,16,18,5]. The issue of ineffective communication between physicians and laboratory staff on patient care remains unresolved, therefore, there is a need of active communication between laboratory and physicians in any case of patient care activities.…”

“…This overall satisfaction rate is nearly similar with reports from St. Paulo's Hospital Millennium Medical College (60%), University of Gondar Hospital (51.5%), Pusan National University Hospital (58.1%), and Saudi Arabia (53.3%) [13,14,15,2]. It is lower than findings from Nekemte Referral Hospital (65%), and selected hospitals in eastern part of Ethiopia (80%), and College of American Pathologists Q-Probes study of 81 Institutions in 2016 [16,11,5]. The difference may be due to difference in participants and sample size.…”

“…This finding was supported by reports from Tanzanya, Egypt and Korea. Previous studies conducted in Gondar University hospital, and Nekemte referral hospital in Ethiopia showed that physicians perceived that the existing test menu was not adequate [21,22,15,14,16].…”

Clinicians’ perceived quality of laboratory services provided at public hospitals and primary health centres in northeast Ethiopia

“…Many aspects of laboratory services could be investigated from the clinician's perspective, such as the availability of ordered tests, courier services, availability of a helpful user guidebook, courtesy and respect, laboratory report format, turnaround time (TAT) of results, noti cation of critical results, and reliability of results [5,6]. Previous studies in Ethiopia have shown that physicians were most dissatis ed with the provision of timely results, advisory services and noti cation of panic values [14][15][16][17], including the behavioural manners of providers [14,18]. However, many argue the validity of user satisfaction as a measure of quality, particularly technical aspects, as users could be more sensitive to behavioural aspects [18,19].…”