Patient satisfaction is a significant and integral aspect of any health facility; hence the institution should strive to make sure it meets patients’ expectations. As identify, the health sector has become a competitive field hence patient looks for a healthcare facility which meets their needs and expectations.
Therefore, a health facility must come up with strategies and policies which are patient-centered. These strategies are geared towards creating an environment that is satisfying to the patients and meets the patients’ needs. Thus, one of the strategies is getting the patients’ perspective through a survey that will make sure it captures the majority of patients’ views and opinions on the various aspect of the health facility. A successful survey will provide a glimpse of areas the management of the facility need to improve so as to provide quality and standard care which will meet customers’ needs, requirement and eventuality their satisfactions. Additionally, Customers’ satisfaction is essential to any health facility, and it’s a collective responsibility. Hence, the staffs should be involved in the process whenever possible to make sure the process is a success. The findings and the recommendations of the survey should be communicated to the staffs so as the improvement process can begin immediately (Andaleeb, 2001).
As mention, the facility receives over 10,000 patients annually. Thus, the survey questions must captures the areas that are frequent by many patients from the customer’s services desk to the pharmacist counter when the patients are about to leave the hospital. As such, the following questions address the key areas where the customers’ satisfaction process should start.
Questions for the survey
• Do you find making appointments with a doctor/nurse easy?
• How much longer were you kept waiting at the reception/exam?
• Were the staffs helpful in answering your queries and offering advice?
• are the operations/working hours appropriate for you?
• Is the quality standards of the health care you receive at the health care meet your standards?
The survey will be qualitative since it aims at capturing the respondent views on the quality standards of the facility. In additional, the survey wants to establish the reasons why the patients visit the facility in large numbers and how improve the services. Furthermore, the research wants to explore the perceptions various services offered by the facility (Patton, 2005).
The sample size of the survey would be 200 patients both male and female. The sample size is appropriate for the survey since it will make sure it captures a signification portion of patients who visit the facility in a month. Additionally, the sample size will reduce the cost and time of the survey as compared using the 10,000 patients who are estimated to visit the facility over a year. The respondents for the survey will be chosen randomly. However, they will be informed the purpose of the survey before they give their consent to participate in the survey. Additionally, their privacy will be guaranteed since they will not be required anywhere in the survey materials to indicate their names (Patton, 2005).
The survey will employ questionnaires and interviews as instruments of collecting the data required for the survey. The respondents will be given the questionnaires to fill after they have received treatment. Moreover, the patients will have the option of filling the questionnaires at the facility’s reception and or go home fill and return it the next day in person or through courier services. However, those patients who will not be in a position to fill the questionnaires, they will be interviewed, and their responds will be audio recorded (Sandelowski, 2000).
After the collection of data is completed, the data will be recorded coded and analyzed by a panel of ten individual who is competent in the research. The reliability, quality and validity of the survey will be assessed based on the requirement and guidelines of QUADS checklist. This will make sure the survey if free of biased, and it has met the all the requirements of the survey (Adhia et al., 2013).
Reference
Adhia, D. B., Bussey, M. D., Ribeiro, D. C., Tumilty, S., & Milosavljevic, S. (2013). Validity and reliability of palpation-digitization for non-invasive kinematic measurement–A systematic review. Manual therapy, 18(1), 26-34.
Andaleeb, S. S. (2001). Service quality perceptions and patient satisfaction: a study of hospitals in a developing country. Social science & medicine, 52(9), 1359-1370.
Patton, M. Q. (2005). Qualitative research. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sandelowski, M. (2000). Combining qualitative and quantitative sampling, data collection, and analysis techniques in mixed‐method studies. Research in nursing & health, 23(3), 246-255.
