THE EFFECT OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT ON EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT HEALTHCARE SERVICE DELIVERY IN NIGERIA. A CASE STUDY OF UNIVERSITY OF BENIN TEACHING HOSPITAL, BENIN CITY

ABSTRACT

This study examines the  effect of Total Quality Management on effective and efficient healthcare service delivery in Nigeria using University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) as a case study. To achieve the above stated aim, five objectives, five research questions and five hypotheses were formulated, tested and analyzed. The study was restricted to some selected staff the Teaching Hospital. The descriptive research design was adopted for the study. The total population used for the study was 400 out of which only 343 participated. Data for the study were collected with the aid of questionnaires; the data generated through the instrument were analyzed using the simple percentage and one sample T test at 0.05 level of significance. Related documents and literatures were also utilized to elicit information for this study.The study revealed that the level of literacy of health workers does not significantly affect the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM). The study also revealed that Total Quality Management is not too significantly difficult for the health workers to operate because it is user friendly. It was also discovered that the passion of health workers does significantly promote the implementation of TQM in UBTH. It was confirmed from the study that solutions must be well profound to stem down those problems, like poor working condition, training of staff among others, that discourages the health workers in implementation of the TQM.  It was recommended that there should be a good and conducive working environment to enable the health workers to perform their duties optimally; that management of the Teaching Hospital should ensure that enough provision of working materials that will make it easy to implement TQ and that  health workers should be trained and retrained on the tenets and applicability of TQM and finally that the adoption TQM and it must be done in such a way that its implementation should suit the ethics, and predetermined goals of the hospital.