SATISFACTION OF PATIENTS ADMITTED TO AL.IMAMAIN AL.KADHIMAIN TEACHING HOSPITAL WITH QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE SERVICES

Introduction: In the modern open and multiple choices world, provision of high quality services and improvement of patients' conviction are becoming a critical objective to avoid patients' transfer to another health care provider. Thus, patients' satisfaction becomes crucial to the long-term success and profitability of health care organizations. Objective: To explore satisfaction of patients with service quality in Al.ImamainAl.Kadimain teaching hospital by the use of serviqual model; and to identify factors that may influence this satisfaction, mainly patients' characteristics & clinical setting. Method: This is a cross-sectional study with an analytic element, carried out in Al.ImamainAl.Kadhimain teaching hospital, Baghdad-Iraq; during period of March through April, 2017. It involved patients admitted to internal medicine, gynecology, and surgery departments of hospital. The study relied on conducting face to face interviews using SERVQUAL questionnaire. This tool assessed service quality in five dimensions(tangibility, reliability, assistance, safety, and empathy). Results: The study involved 400 patients. The majority of participants was women (61.0%), young (57.8%), housewives (56.0%) and did not complete secondary education level (≃80%). The overall service quality score was (4.237?0.649). The scores of various dimensions were: tangibility (3.751?0.709), reliability (4.386?0.775), assistance (4.348?0.810), safety (4.498?0.718) and empathy (4.204?0.850). Factors found to be associated significantly with patients' satisfaction for services quality were education (p=0.003), occupation (p=0.004) and mode of admission to hospital (p=0.022). Conclusion: This study revealed that patients in Al.ImamainAl.Kadmain teaching hospital perceived service quality as satisfactory when estimated by SERVQUAL model. The dimensions which have relatively low scores are tangibility and empathy. Those patients who were satisfied with quality of health care services are more likely to advice other people to use hospital services.