Patients’ satisfaction with ophthalmic counselling services in a tertiary hospital in Calabar, South-South Nigeria

Abstract

Objective: To assess the level of satisfaction of patients who access the Ophthalmic counselling services anchored by trained social workers of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, NigeriaMethods: A cross-sectional study of serial consenting participants was done. Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Calabar Teaching hospitals’ ethics committee. Data was obtained using a semi-structured intervieweradministeredquestionnaire. Data were collated and analyzed using the SPSS for Windows (version 20, SPSS inc. Chicago, IL, USA). Modified Likert scale (very satisfied, satisfied and not satisfied) was used to rate the satisfaction level.Results: A total of 120 respondents met the inclusion criteria and were enrolled into the study. Majority of the respondents (60%) were male with an overall mean age of 45.32± 1.82. Over a quarter (28.3%) of the respondents were in the age bracket of 41-50. Glaucoma (48.3%) was the most common eye condition of the respondents. Seventy-five percent of the respondents were satisfied with the average time spent for the counselling services while 76.7% were satisfied with the overall ophthalmic counselling services they received with 46.7% believing that the service was provided by a social worker.Conclusion: Majority of the Patients were satisfied with the Ophthalmic counselling services mainly anchored by social workers. Training and retraining of allied support staff to render ophthalmic counselling services in order to ease the workload of the Ophthalmologist should be encouraged in resource-limited settings.Keywords: Patients satisfaction, ophthalmic counselling service, NigeriaFunding: None declared

Informed Consent in Surgical Practice in Port Harcourt: How Informed are the Patients?

“…Our findings share some similarity with another study done in Calabar Nigeria reporting counselling for ophthalmic services, though in that study the counselling was carried out by social workers with higher satisfaction among patients [33]. Our study differs from another study that described quality of counselling services among knee or shoulder arthroscopy patients and reported satisfaction among almost all respondents, with a call for caregivers training in patient-centred and goal-oriented counselling [7].…”