Does Patient Satisfaction With Healthcare Influence Their Decision To Seek Healthcare?
Patient satisfaction with healthcare is an important health systems outcome. We examined the relationship between patient satisfaction with healthcare and the decision to seek healthcare in a rural community in South-Eastern Nigeria.
METHODS:
A cross-sectional study of inhabitants of a rural community in South-Eastern Nigeria, selected by stratified cluster sampling was conducted. The sampling unit was household. Interviewer-administered semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect information on their socio-demographic characteristics, illness history in the previous six months, type of healthcare sought, and their satisfaction with healthcare in the government health centre located in their community. Data was analyzed using SPSS Statistics version 19. Frequencies and odds ratios were derived.
RESULTS:
We studied 131 households, of which 86 (66.2%) had sought care in the government health centre under study. However, only 20.3% of the households had sought care at the health centre for illness in the previous 6months. The households were most satisfied with the availability of equipment (61.4%) while they were least satisfied with attitude of health workers (11.9%) and privacy during consultation (2.3%). In bivariate analysis, satisfaction with cleanliness of the facility and non-satisfaction with availability of equipment were significantly associated with seeking care at the health centre (OR:4.37; p=0.005 and OR:0.12; p=0.01 respectively). However, in the multivariate logistic regression, only cleanliness of the facility remained significantly associated with seeking care at the health centre (adj OR:4.84; p=0.04). When bootstrapping method was used in the multivariate analysis, secondary level of education of the head of household and cleanliness of the facility were significantly associated with seeking healthcare at the health centre (adj OR:9.44; p=0.049 and adj OR:4.84; p=0.03 respectively).
CONCLUSIONS:
Patients were not satisfied with most aspects of healthcare in this setting. Cleanliness of the health facility was the most significant determinant of their decision to seek healthcare.