Comparative Assessment of Clients Satisfaction with Doctors Services in Teaching and Mission Hospitals in South East Nigeria

Abstract

Satisfaction is the evaluation of clients’ on service or products and how it fulfills their needs and expectations [1-3]. Satisfaction with healthcare services is defined as the extent to which the patients seeking treatment experience positive perception of the care provided by the nursing or medical staff [4-6]. Patient satisfaction is defined here in terms of patients’ evaluations of what they experienced during their healthcare. It therefore reflects the gap between the expected service and the experience of the service, from the client’s point of view. Patients’ experiences are their direct, personal observations of their healthcare. Patients’ expectations have been defined as the anticipation that given events are likely to occur during, or as an outcome of, healthcare. In this way, what people expect to receive from their healthcare, compared with what they received in practice, are strongly important in influencing patients’ evaluations of their care (‘satisfaction’) [7]. It is often argued that a superfluity of perceived healthcare over anticipated or expected leads to increased satisfaction and in reverse, that unfulfilled expectations lead to increased dissatisfaction [7-9]. Ideally, patients who are satisfied with the care provided by the healthcare staff, are more likely to utilize health services in future and comply with the prescribed medical treatment to completion [8,9]. For patients to be more satisfied with treatment there is need to provide high quality healthcare which is viewed as safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, and patientcentered [10].