Patient Satisfaction in Malaysia’s Busiest Outpatient Medical Care

Abstract

This study aimed to explore factors associated with patient satisfaction of outpatient medical care in Malaysia. A cross-sectional exit survey was conducted among 340 outpatients aged between 13 and 80 years after successful clinical consultations and treatment acquirements using convenience sampling at the outpatient medical care of Tengku Ampuan Rahimah Hospital (HTAR), Malaysia, being the country's busiest medical outpatient facility. A survey that consisted of sociodemography, socioeconomic, and health characteristics and the validated Short-Form Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ-18) scale were used. Patient satisfaction was the highest in terms of service factors or tangible priorities, particularly “technical quality” and “accessibility and convenience,” but satisfaction was low in terms of service orientation of doctors, particularly the “time spent with doctor,” “interpersonal manners,” and “communication” during consultations. Gender, income level, and purpose of visit to the clinic were important correlates of patient satisfaction. Effort to improve service orientation among doctors through periodical professional development programs at hospital and national level is essential to boost the country's health service satisfaction.

Patient satisfaction of services of the out patient department, Base Hospital, Panadura

“…Therefore, the level of patient satisfaction on the services is an indicator to identify the specific areas that need Kalubowila K et al JCCPSL 2017, 23 (2) Open Access further improvement. The present study revealed poor satisfaction with the waiting time for consultation and pharmacy service.…”

“…Patient satisfaction is one of the benchmarks by which the quality of health care services is evaluated (1). It is a subjective assessment against one's own expectations, thus providing crucial information on the mismatch of expectations and quality of care received by each individual (2).…”

“…It is shown that a higher level of patient satisfaction could enhance the compliance of patients to treatment, which could lead to positive outcomes of the disease itself (2). Recently, there has been greater weight put on the patient contribution to treatment decisions, along with patient sovereignty upheld as one of the basic values and causal evidence for the success of delivering health care services (3).…”

Assessing patient satisfaction with obstetrics and gynaecology clinics/outpatient department in university hospital Konya, Turkey

“…The satisfaction was higher than a study was reported 56.1% of the users of the general OB/GYN clinics were satisfied with service another study from Malaysia reported that the mean of the total satisfaction score was 59.2, this satisfaction score was also lower than satisfaction of current study. 12,13 More than half of the respondents were satisfied with appointments system but around 34 % of the respondents were not satisfied with it. The respondents who were not satisfied with appointment system may due to their education back ground or they may not similar to the appointment system and also it could be due to patient's age, elderly may have difficulty to make appointment.…”

Satisfaction Level of Patients, Physicians, and Private Primary Healthcare Center Managers With Chronic Disease Management Program in Indonesia

“…The previous study showed that accessibility and convenience, technical quality, interpersonal manner, and communication also have the highest score. If PHCs want to increase patient satisfaction level then they should start to identify problems related financial aspect, the time spent with the doctor, and general satisfaction [12]. For example, financial aspect became major problem for the patient.…”