Assessing the Service Quality of delivered care for people with chronic renal failare undegoing hemodialysis in Ta-briz hospitals in 2016

Abstract

Abstract Background: Service Quality generally refers to the non-health and non-clinical aspects of the health services and mainly focuses on relationship between care provider and health customers, and the environment in which care services were delivered. This study aimed to assess SQ for dialysis patients perspective at the the public hospitals of Ta-briz. Methods and Materials: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 141 participants who undegoing hemodialysis in public hospitals of Tabriz in 2016. Service quality was assessed using 37 items questionnaire based on the importance, performance and service quality (SQ) with respect to the patients’ perspective. Questionnaire validity and reliability was confirmed in previous studies. SQ is obtained through: Service Quality = 10–(Importance ×Performance). Importance scores ranged from 1 to 10 and performance score ranged from 0 to 1. Data is analysed using the SPSS-19 software. Result: Findings indicate almost 62.4% of participants were men and 33.3% of them have had elementay education and 88.8% have insurance. Almost 50.3% of participants aged over 60 years. 63.1% of the participants in this study were diagnosed with hyperten-sion and also blood pressure has been reported as the most frequent (38.2%) cause of renal failare. SQ scores of the most SQ aspects was lower than acceptable score, also from the customers’ perspective the average service quality score was 8.08 of 10 (the top score). Confidentiality (9.5), Dignity (9.42) and Quality of basic amenities (9.07) gained the highest and prevention (7.41) and support group (6.39) gained the lowest scores SQ scores. Conclusions: Findings revealed a significant gap between desired and current status in most aspects of service quality especially in support group, prevention, prompt attention, continuity, autonomy and access and a room for quality improvement. In this regard, improving the quality of care and attention to the needs and expectations of customers and establish support groups for emotional support of patients who undegoing hemodialysis is important