What do patients value in the hospital meal experience?

Abstract

A number of previous studies have reported on the aspects of hospital food service that patients value, but usually as a secondary finding, and not generally based upon patient-centred approaches.This study employed a questionnaire produced ab initio from interviews with patients and hospital staff, the data from which were subjected to factor and cluster analysis, in order to identify and prioritise the factors that contribute to the meal experience empirically. The most important factors, food and service were as identified by other authors. In decreasing order of importance were social, personal and situational factors. The results confirm that improving the quality of the food and the efficiency with which it reaches the patients remain the most important objectives of hospital food service. Introduction 1

The art of eating soon after coronary artery bypass grafting: an interview study

“…This lack of control around meals during hospital stays has been described before (Williams et al, 2008;Johns et al, 2009). According to two English surveys on how patients thought hospital meals could be improved, the type of food and its quality, a possibility to choose and the service-where, how and when food was served, as well as the attitude and behaviour of the staff serving-were the most important issues (Johns et al, 2009;Hartwell et al, 2015).…”

Perceived Situational Appropriateness as a Predictor of Consumers' Food and Beverage Choices

“…The determination of the appropriateness of a product in different consumption situations is considered an important performance indicator to provide guidance in the product development process (Jaeger and Porcherot, 2017; Jaeger et al, 2017). To this end, several methodological approaches have been adopted, such as the Repertory Grid method (Jaeger et al, 2005), focus groups (Elzerman et al, 2013), personal interviews (Hartwell et al, 2016), and word associations (de Andrade et al, 2016).…”

Measuring the quality of Hospital Food Services: Development and reliability of a Meal Quality Audit Tool

“…Patient satisfaction is a widely accepted measure of food service quality, with it being considered a key indicator of health‐care quality . Meal quality has been identified as a key aspect of patient satisfaction with hospital food services; however, patient satisfaction with hospital food services is a complex phenomenon, and a patient's assessment of meal quality is likely to be influenced by many factors, including expectations of the hospital food, interactions with staff and the often negative experience of being hospitalised . Patients can only comment from a subjective perspective on a limited number of components of the meal, including appearance, smell and taste, but rarely on other quality components, including accuracy (e.g.…”