Patient satisfaction: a study of Hamedan teaching and general hospitals

This study examined patient satisfaction and related factors in the general hospitals affiliated to Hamedan Medical University Sciences.

A sample of 400 patients was studied in 5 university hospitals in Hamedan. Participants were asked to fill in a "satisfaction" questionnaire under the supervision of a trained hospital nurse. The questionnaire consisted of 44 multiple choice and open-ended questions. To look at the factors that could affect patient satisfaction, 11 independent variables were examined: age, sex, marital status, education, employment, income, living conditions, admitted hospital and admitted ward, access to hospital and specific information on the disease.

The overall rate of satisfaction with hospital services was 72%. About 40.5% of patients did not know what kind of disease they had and for 44.7% access to hospital was difficult. In response to the question "would you recounted this hospital to others?" only 45.3% answered "yes". Moreover, 27.7% of the respondents reported some shortcomings such as: poor sanitation (34%), problems with general facilities such as poor food quality, and crowded rooms (30.6%), and lack of adequate medical equipment (13.7%). in the final analysis, the variables showing a significant relationship with in-patient satisfaction were education, income and access to hospital.

In general patients were satisfied with hospitals, although they indicated areas that needs to be improved. The results suggest that patients with lower socioeconomic status were more satisfied as compared to those with higher socioeconomic background.