Assessments of Patients' Satisfaction Towards Clinical Laboratory Services Received at Uniformed Service Hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Creators: name: Tesfaye, Tadesse
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2014

description: Back ground: The patients experience the services in another way than the laboratory staff and management, and may indicate weak elements in laboratory services that the laboratory was not aware of. Therefore, the clients of the laboratory are a very good source to discover elements of Key words: Satisfaction, Patients' satisfaction, Clinical laboratory services laboratory service that can be improved. Objective: To assess patients' satisfaction towards clinical laboratory services received at Uniformed Service Hospitals in Addis Ababa, April to May 2014. Methods: A cross sectional, hospital based, descriptive study was conducted between April and May, 2014, on a sample of 422 service users of the laboratory using systematic random sampling technique. Data was collected using structured questionnaire, through face to face interview and analyzed by SPSS windows version 15.0. Satisfaction score was calculated by using Likert's five Scale giving a value of 1 for very dissatisfied up to a value of 5 for very satisfied. Median of the summary score of satisfaction was used to classify as satisfied and dissatisfied since the distribution of summary scores was skewed. Logistic regression model was also used to examine the effect of selected variables on patients' satisfaction with laboratory services. P-Value less than 0.05 were taken as statistically significant. Results: The respondent's age range was between 18 and 66 years. 34.4% and 65.6% were from Armed Forces Referral and Teaching Hospital and Federal Police Referral Hospital, respectively. The overall satisfaction level of patients towards clinical laboratory services was 51.7% with the response rate of 422 (100%). Among the different indicators, patients were highly satisfied with courtesy/respect by laboratory workers (84.6%) while patients were highly dissatisfied with unavailability of laboratory workers on working hours (48.6%). The major determinants for dissatisfaction were long waiting time to give laboratory specimen (AOR=1.99, 95% CI 1.10 – 3.58, P=0.02), lack of place in blood drawing room to put personal thing (AOR= 6.83, 95%CI 3.07 – 15.20, P=0.00), lack of place in latrine room to put personal things (AOR=21.95, 95% CI 5.38-89.51, P=0.00), unavailability of ordered laboratory tests (AOR=2.98, 95% CI 1.68-5.34, P=0.00) and dissatisfaction of patients towards pre-laboratory services (AOR= 7.99, 95% CI 4.47- 12.28, P=0.00). Conclusion: Of 422 respondents only 51.7 % of patient was satisfied with clinical laboratory services. Long waiting time to give laboratory specimen, availability of place in latrine and blood drawing rooms to put personal things, unavailability of ordered laboratory tests and dissatisfaction of patients towards pre-laboratory services were found to have statistically significant association with the overall satisfaction of patients towards clinical laboratory services. Therefore, these might be the possible determinants for the dissatisfaction of patients with clinical laboratory services.