title: Perceptual gaps in understanding patient expectations for health care service quality.
abstract: This article assesses how well physicians, health administrators, patient-contact employees, and especially medical and nursing students understand patient expectations for service quality as measured by the SERVQUAL scale. Using a cross-sectional research design and discriminant analysis, it was found that health administrators were most likely to accurately estimate the service expectations of patients, while medical and nursing students were most likely to underestimate them.
authors.affiliation: School of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA.
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: O'Connor
authors.forename: H Q
authors.initials: HQ
authors.lastname: Trinh
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Shewchuk
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011787:Quality of Health Care