Patients’ satisfaction with eye care services in University of Calabar Teaching Hospital

Background: Monitoring of patients' experiences and satisfaction provide the health institution one of several parameters to measure quality of services and determine areas where improvement and or additional services are needed. Aim: To determine patients' satisfaction regarding the services in the ophthalmic out-patient clinic in University of Calabar Teaching Hospital. Materials and methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among patients attending the eye clinic of the department of ophthalmology, University of Calabar Teaching hospital, Calabar from 1st October to 31st December 2016. All consecutive registered adult patients who gave consent, along with consenting guardians of patients who were younger than 18 years were included in the study and interviewed. An Interviewer-administered pretested and validated questionnaire was used for data collection. Data obtained were analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 software). Frequencies and percentages were used. Parametric analyses included bivariate analysis and multiple logistic regressions and Pearson coefficient of correlation with p 0∙05 being considered statistically significant. Results: The level of satisfaction with accessibility to the hospital and medical care in the eye clinic was very high 95.4%. On time spent in clinic, majority of respondents (50.8%) felt that the waiting time for emergency treatment was good. However, only 39.9% of the respondents felt that the waiting time to be attended to by a doctor in the routine clinic was short. Waiting time for performing an investigation and subsequently getting the result was reported as poor by 62.5% and very poor by 69% respectively. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that only 35.2% of respondents were satisfied with the overall quality of the medical care service received from the eye clinic of the UCTH, Calabar.