Patient satisfaction with services of the outpatient department.
BACKGROUND
Patients' satisfaction is a useful measure to provide an indicator of quality in healthcare and thus needs to be measured frequently. The aim of the study was to analyse and compare the level of satisfaction of patients attending the Outpatient Department of a Hospital.


METHODS
Study was conducted by using a pre-structured questionnaire with 120 samples. Samples were further stratified into sub-populations of Officers, Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) and Other Ranks (ORs) including dependents as study population.


RESULTS
JCOs predominantly expressed lower satisfaction judgement with several attributes. Overall satisfaction judgement with Outpatient Department services were rated lower by JCOs (2.56) when compared with Officers and ORs (3.10), the difference being statistically significant.


CONCLUSIONS
Statistically significant differences have been identified by this study against various study attributes as well as overall impression towards OPD services among the study groups, which need to be addressed by the hospital leadership to achieve consumer delight.
Executive Officer, INHS Patanjali, Naval Base, Karwar 581308, Karnataka, India.
Athar
A
Mohd
Professor & Head, Department of Hospital Administration, Armed Forces Medical College, Pune 40, India.
Abhijit
A
Chakravarty
Outpatient department; Patient satisfaction; Quality indicator