A Comparative Study of Patients’ Satisfaction with Emergency Departments in Governmental General Hospitals, Kuwait

• Main Author: Saadoun F. Alazmi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Alexandria University 2018-06-01
• Series: Journal of High Institute of Public Health
• Subjects: patient satisfaction; emergency department; kuwait

Background: Patient satisfaction is commonly used as an indicator for evaluation of the quality of health care services provided in the Emergency Departments (EDs). Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the level of patient satisfaction with the Emergency Departments in different governmental public hospitals in Kuwait. Methods: A comparative descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted in five governmental general hospitals located in different governorates in Kuwait state from January to March 2016. A random sample of 657 patients, who attended the emergency departments of these hospitals was asked to participate in the study. A 20-item satisfaction questionnaire was used in this study. The three domains of satisfaction were computed namely; ED courtesy, environment and care-providers. The Pearson’s chi square test (χ2) was used to compare between the satisfaction categories. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare between the median values of satisfaction scores of the five hospitals. For intergroup comparisons, Mann-Whitney test was used. The 5% was considered as the level of significance. Results: A total of 657 patients were enrolled in this study. More than half were males (53.9%), most of them were married (57.2%) and carriers of bachelor degree represented 40.9%. The minimum age of subjects was 18 years and the maximum 86 years, with an average value of 38.9±14.7 years. The majority was belonging to the same health region of the hospital (79.5%) and nearly two-thirds of them had been admitted (68.2%). The highest median for the overall patient satisfaction scores with emergency departments was in Amiri (4.2), and Jahra hospitals (4) followed by Mubarak and Adan hospitals (3.6 each) and the lowest median score was in Farwaniya hospital (3.15). The differences were statistically significant. Similarly, the highest median satisfaction scores for all domains (ED staff courtesy, ED environment and ED care providers) were reported in Amiri and Jahra hospitals, followed by Mubarak and Adan hospitals and the lowest median score was observed in Farwanyia hospital. Less than 20% of the participants attending Farwanyia hospital were satisfied with most items and only 12.9% of the participants attending Adan hospital were satisfied with the waiting area. Conclusion: The study findings indicate that the need for intervention and development in emergency care service departments are required based on the study findings of relatively low level of satisfaction in the emergency department domains namely environment domain, staff courtesy domain and care providers’ domain in Farwaniya hospital.