How satisfied are patients attending a Nigerian eye clinic in University of Calabar Teaching Hospital

Background: Satisfaction surveys are periodically necessary to evaluate services rendered to clients/patients as a means of quality assurance and service improvement. Aim: To determine satisfaction to services rendered to ophthalmic patients in an outpatient eye clinic. Material and methods: It was an observational study carried out with validated questionnaires complemented with a focused group discussion. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 15?0) was used for data analysis. Observation: A total of 251 questionnaires were analyzed comprising 139 males and 112 females (M: F= 1: 0?8). Age range and mean age were 17-92 years and 37?2 + 15?6 years respectively. Overall satisfaction with quality of services was 80?1%. Specifically, 95?6%, 92%, 80?9%, 70?9%, and 59?8% were satisfied with cleanliness of hospital premises, doctors’ willingness to listen to complaints, nursing care; doctors’ following-up on treatment, and time nurses administered treatments respectively. However, only 37?8%, 38?6%, 39?8%, and 47?4% were satisfied with drug costs, cost of transportation to hospital, laboratory charges, and record keeping profile respectively. Conclusion: Costs of uptake of eye care services and record keeping profile were key sources of dissatisfaction in this study.