New master thesis on patient satisfaction at delivery services

Rahel Tesfaye.Client Satisfaction with Delivery Care Services and Associated Factors in the Public Health Facility of Gamo Gofa Zone, South West Ethiopia. 2014. Arba Minch University and Addis Continental Institute of Public Health.

Background Ensuring patient satisfaction is an important means of secondary prevention of maternal mortality. Satisfied women may be more likely to follow to health providers’ recommendations. And, studying patient satisfaction can help to improve services, and reduce costs. However, so far there few reports on client satisfaction on delivery care from developing countries. This study presents findings from a multi-dimensional study of client satisfaction from the Gamo Gofa Zone in South-West Ethiopia.

Objective The aim of this study was to assess how satisfied clients using delivery services at public health facilities are Gamo Gofa zone in South-West Ethiopia.

Methods Using exit interviews and we did a facility based cross sectional study in December 2013 and January 2014. We measured client satisfaction using a survey adopted from the Donabedian quality assessment framework. We randomly sampled 13 of 66 institutions in Gamo Gofa. The number of delivering mothers in each health institution was based on proportional to size allocation. We used logistic regression to determine predictors of client satisfaction.

Results Most of mothers (79%; 95% CI; 75-82%) were satisfied with delivery care. The presence of support persons during child birth improved satisfaction (AOR=8.19 95% CI; 3.49-18.8). ), as were women who delivered with caesarean section (AOR 2.99; 95% CI; 1.17 -7.66). However, client satisfaction was reduced if the women had to pay for the services (AOR=0.13 95%CI; 0.06-0.29). Women attending hospitals were less satisfied (69%) than women attending health centres (94%). The proportion of women who complained about an unfriendly attitude from health workers was higher in the hospitals.

Conclusions The study shows that that overall satisfaction level good, but there is room for improvements. More emphasis should be to have women friendly care, especially at the hospitals