Level of medical-surgical patient satisfaction with the nursing care at Adventist hospitals in the Philippines

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to discover the levels of patient satisfaction with nursing care in five adventist hospitals in the Philippines two teaching and three nonteaching. The study was also designed to find out what factors in the nursing care are associated with patients' satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Fifty-three patients met the criteria for the study, but data were gathered on 50. The nursing process was used as the conceptual framework. The study used both descriptive statistics for demographics and inferential statistics for similarities and differences. A 35 item questionnaire was used and was treated with ANOVA for hypothesis one and t test for hypotheses 2-5. Alpha level was set at .05. The results from testing the four hypotheses indicated there were no significant differences in patient satisfaction between teaching and nonteaching hospitals. There was no significant difference among the three nonteaching hospitals. There was no significant difference in patient satisfaction scores between the two teaching hospitals. There was a significant difference between steps of the nursing process on total score for patient satisfaction. The planning step of the nursing process had the highest mean score while the evaluation step had the lowest mean score. Nursing behaviors which are satisfying to patients are sincere interest and concern about the patient as an intelligent participant in health care. Patients are least satisfied with behaviors that indicate lack of concern, unwillingness to include the patient in decisions, and rote or stereotyped action. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the nursing service administration use this information in planning in-service education programs to improve quality of nursing care, to increase nurse's sensitivity to patient satisfaction. It is also recommended that quality care be qiven top priority, and that nurses set standards of practice and monitor the quality of care. The nursing process needs more emphasis on evaluation and improvement in implementation, and assessment.