بحث منشور الى الاستاذ المساعد الدكتورة سميرة محمد بعنوان Satisfaction with Nursing Care among Patients

Abstract: This study was carried out on a sample of 100 patients attending outpatient oncology center in Basra governorate located

 

in south of Iraq. In order to assess their satisfaction with nursing care quality and identify the relationship between their satisfaction

 

rate and selected variables. The results showed that high satisfaction rate for the technical quality 87 (87%) followed by interpersonal

 

communication dimension 86 (86%) while the lowest satisfaction rate was for the information given by the nurse 64 (64%). There

 

were no statistical differences among the age of the patients, their education, their marital status and occupation. Furthermore, the

 

satisfaction level with nursing care except for females who reported significantly higher level of satisfaction with nursing technical

 

quality.

Key words: Satisfaction, patients, nursing care, technical quality, communication, information.

1. Introduction

 

Patient satisfaction is significant and usually used

 

as an indicator for measuring the degree of excellence

 

in health care. Patient satisfaction is the patient’s

 

perception of care received compared with the care

 

expected [1]. Nurses act reciprocally with patients

 

more frequently than any other health care staff in a

 

hospital. Nurse acts in translating information given

 

by doctors in a highly skilled manner with a human

 

touch [2].

 

Patients have their internal expectation for nurses’

 

caring, manner and attitudes and nurses’ performance

 

of caring behavior, this expectation has a direct impact

 

on the patients’ feelings. Therefore, it is great

 

important for all nurses to keep improving their

 

oncology professional knowledge, attitudes, skills as

 

well as their capability of offering support in the fields

 

of information, emotion and technical support and

 

help for their cancer patients [3].

 

Contemporary healthcare systems try to adopt a

 

Corresponding author: Samira Muhammed Ebrahim, Ph.D.,

 

main research field: community medicine. E-mail:

 

samira_m_ebrahim@yahoo.com.

 

more customer-oriented access to the delivery of

 

healthcare. With this shift, patient satisfaction and

 

quality of life are becoming more and more significant

 

as the more traditional clinic effects in the monitoring

 

and evaluation of healthcare delivery. So, the

 

assessment of patient satisfaction submits a way of

 

improving health status and prevents misuse of

 

medical resources [4].

 

There are only a few reports of patient satisfaction

 

from developing countries, with comparing to the high

 

volume of publications on patient satisfaction from

 

developed countries [1]. In India, 609 patients across 6

 

Tertiary Cancer Treatment Hospitals that were

 

selected from 6 regions were interviewed. The study

 

reveals that above 70% of the patients were satisfied

 

with the facilities, doctors, nurses, services and care,

 

except on the few items like information supported by

 

doctor or nurses and the facilities for attendants [5].

 

In Irana, study was conducted on 384 cancer patients

 

in the oncology wards of 10 teaching-hospitals of two

 

main government universities, revealing that a vast

 

majority of these respondents (82.8%) were satisfied

 

with the nursing care provided to them, while the

 

others (17.2%) were not [1].

 

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Satisfaction with Nursing Care among Patients Attending Oncology Center in Basra City, Iraq

 

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Studying patient satisfaction with chemotherapy

 

care at Worthing Hospital, UK. Patient satisfaction

 

levels were generally high in the 173 patients who

 

provided data, with 97% of patients happy with the

 

service overall. Overall, satisfaction was strongly

 

associated with patient compliance. Satisfaction was

 

expressed most consistently with chemotherapy

 

nursing care, while lower satisfaction levels were

 

associated with patient information in particular [6].

 

Local studies conducted in Iraq about patient

 

satisfaction with nursing care but not for cancer

 

patients, one of these studies was conducted in Thiqar

 

on 452 clients from 5 different public health care

 

facilities at Alnassirya city, showing that 222 (49.1%)

 

were dissatisfied with the health care services offered

 

by facilities. High dissatisfaction rate was associated

 

with low education, unemployment, male gender and

 

being single [4].

 

In Baghdad, a study conducted on 150 patients at

 

hemodialysis units, teaching hospitals was selected,

 

showing that there is high satisfaction to clinical

 

nursing care, communication/patient-nurse

 

relationship and moderate satisfaction toward nursing

 

health education [7].

 

Objectives of the study:

 

(1) To assess the patient satisfaction with nursing

 

care quality;

 

(2) To identify the relationship of satisfaction with

 

selected variables.

 

2. Methodology

 

Descriptive, Cross Sectional Study conducted in

 

Oncology center in Basra governorate south of Iraq. A

 

convenient sample of 100 patients attending outpatient

 

oncology center were selected. Structured

 

questionnaire was used for the purpose of data

 

collection, which was carried out from December

 

2014 through February 2015.

 

The questionnaire was adopted and modified from a

 

study done elsewhere [1, 8, 9]. The questionnaire

 

contains items related to socio-demographic

 

characteristics of the patients and items to the disease

 

and satisfaction with three aspects of nursing care as

 

technical quality, interpersonal communication and

 

information given by the nurse. Standardized 5-point

 

Likert scales ranging from strongly unsatisfied to

 

strongly satisfied (1 to 5 points) were used for all the

 

20 items. Patient satisfactions were classified into two

 

categories—satisfied and not satisfied by using the

 

demarcation threshold from Eq. (1):