ASSESSMENT OF CLIENT’S SATISFACTION OF THE OUTPATIENT HEALTH CARE SERVICES PROVIDED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BENIN TEACHING HOSPITAL, BENIN CITY

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Patients satisfaction is a multidimensional aspect which represents an important key marker for the quality of healthcare delivery. Most patients in developing countries are faced with various challenges on daily basis with can affect treatment outcome and level of satisfaction. Factors including unavailability or shortage of drugs, uneven distribution of health services, poor availability of equipment or guidelines, attitudes of health workers, long waiting time, out of pocket expenditure or lack of hospital infrastructure have been identified as some of the major problems affecting the developing countries, and these problems contribute largely to the dissatisfaction with healthcare services among patients. Identifying these factors will assist the management to not only identify its strength and limitations, but also develop strategies to adequately channel its effort and resources for a more efficient and effective delivery of healthcare services. OBJECTIVE: To assess the rate of satisfaction with healthcare service delivery among outpatients of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. METHODOLOGY: This was a descriptive study. The study population comprise of outpatients in the General Practice Clinic, Obstetric and Gynaecology Antenatal Clinic, Surgery Outpatient department and Medicine Outpatient department, all in the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin city. The first respondent was selected by simple random sample technique and the subsequent respondents were selected using sample interval, K=6. The tool for data collection was a pre-tested self-administered questionnaire. Data analysis was done using IBM SPSS version 22.0. RESULT: A total of 420 respondents participated in this study. The mean age(S.D.) of the respondents was 37.2+/-11.9 years. The overall knowledge was good with 216(51.4%). There was a significant statistical association between level of education, occupational skills and knowledge of healthcare service delivery among respondents. Overall satisfaction was  good among 371(88.3%) of respondents. There was a significant statistical associations between attitude and satisfaction of respondents reason being that patients agreed that healthcare services, physical facilities, physician-patient interaction etc were adequate. CONCLUSION: Slightly more than half of the respondents had overall good knowledge of health service delivery. Almost all the respondents had positive attitude towards health service delivery. Majority of the respondents were satisfied with health service delivery. This is because the outpatients in the various departments had positive attitude towards healthcare delivery of University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City. Satisfaction rate also increased because of the level of education of the outpatients. Keywords: CLIENT, SATISFACTION, OUTPATIENTS HEALTHCARE SERVICES, UBTH