Patient satisfaction in a Moroccan emergency department

Abstract

BackgroundMeasuring healthcare quality and improving patient satisfaction have become increasingly prevalent, especially among healthcare providers and purchasers of healthcare. Currently, research is interested to the satisfaction in several areas, and in various cultures. The aim of this study was; to confirm the reliability and validity of the Arabic version of the Emergency Department Quality Study (EDQS), to evaluate patient satisfaction with emergency care, and to determine associated factors with patient satisfaction.MethodsA survey of socio demographic, visit and health characteristics of patients, conducted in emergency department (ED) of a Moroccan University Hospital during 1 week in February 2009. The EDQS was performed with patients who were discharged from ED. The psychometric properties of the EDQS were tested. Factors influencing patient satisfaction were identified using ordinal logistic regression.ResultsA total of 212 patients were enrolled. The Arabic version of the EDQS showed excellent reliability and validity. Sixty six percent of participants were satisfied with overall care, and 69.8% would return to our unit. The most patient-reported problems were about waiting time and test results. Variables associated with greater satisfaction with ED care were: emergent (OR: 0.15; 95% CI = 0.04-0.31; P < 0.001), or urgent patients (OR: 0.35; 95% CI = 0.15-0.86; P = 0.02) compared to non-urgent patients, and waiting time less than 15 min (OR: 0.41; 95% CI = 0.23-0.75; P = 0.003). Variables associated with lesser satisfaction were: distance patient’s home hospital ≤10Kilometers (OR: 2.64; 95% CI = 1.53-4.53; P < 0.001), weekday’s admissions (OR: 2.66; 95% CI = 1.32 to 5.34; P < 0.006), and educational level; with secondary (OR: 5.19; 95% CI = 2.04-13.21; P < 0.001) primary (OR: 3.04; 95% CI = 1.10-8.04; P = 0.03) and illiterate patients (OR: 2.53; 95% CI = 1.02-6.30; P = 0.03) were less satisfied compared to those with high educational level.ConclusionMedical staff needs to consider different interactions between those predictive factors in order to develop some supportive tools.

Patients’ satisfaction towards medical services at the emergency department of European Gaza Hospital-Gaza Strip

“…Nonetheless, there was no relationship reported by age, gender, work shifts, severity of the patient conditions, and patients who completed the questionnaire. This finding is not in line with the study of Damghi et al that observed an association between satisfaction and type of emergency admission, waiting time and the distance from patient's home to the hospital (21). Further analysis of data revealed that patients who arrived in the ED between 14:00 to 20:00 were more dissatisfied than those who arrived in the other times of the day and the difference between arriving time and satisfaction level did not reach a significant level.…”

Real-Time Patient Satisfaction of Emergency Department Services in a Tertiary- Care Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan

“…This is consistent with other studies which showed that "Emergent" and "Urgent" patients perceived their throughput times more favorably than non-urgent patients [23]. The patients with high acuity tends to be more satisfied as shown in our study with their ED care because of their less waiting time and more attention from ED providers [30,31].…”

Evaluation of Cancer Patient Satisfaction: A Transversal Study in Radiotherapy Department, Hassan II University Hospital, Fez, Morocco

“…Eventhough it is a difficult to adopt the results of foreign studies into the Moroccan context, the results of our study was better or similar to others moroccan studies [13][14][15][16] or countries sharing similar socio-economic levels [17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”