Patients’ Perceptions On Customer Service Applied By Nurses In A Private Hospital In Indonesia: Preliminary Action Research Study

Customer service is the efforts of an organization to provide service for their customer in order to achieve patient satisfaction. Even though term of customer service is common in business domain, but it can be used in health care industry such as a hospital. Applying customer service in a private hospitals leads to increased satisfaction for those who received the service and creates loyal customers. This research study aimed at investigating the patients‟ perceptions on customer service applied by nurses in a private hospital in Indonesia. This study was one cycle of an action research study that was carried out in an in-patient ward at a private hospital in Medan, Indonesia. Ten patient participants who had admitted in in-patient ward at least three days were involved in this study. Individual in-depth interviews and field notes were used to collect data. Transcript verbatim was made after an in-depth interview and then was analyzed by using content analysis technique. This study found 5 common themes related to patients‟ perception on customer service applied by nurses in a private hospital. The themes were (1) the meaning of customer service according to the patient (nurses make the patients feel cared, nurses make patients feel respected, nurses make patients feel heard, nurses must be communicative in providing services), (2) nurses meet patients‟ needs by providing care that is responsive (prompt nurses action, fulfilled nursing care for patients), (3) the need to establish a trusting relationship in the interaction between nurses and patients (building a trusting relationship, establishing a good interaction in nursing services, friendly attitude of nurses in providing services), (4) nurses in providing medicines are less communicative (less explaination on the medicine information, less explaination on the change of medications), (5) and, expectations of patients to nurses in providing nursing services (health education provided by nurses, frequent nurses‟ observations). It is recommended that private hospitals in Indonesia should pay more attention to customer service providing by their nurses in delivering nursing service to their patients. They also need to improve their nurses‟ knowledge and capabilities on customer service so that the nurses will always bring this knowledge and capabilities into their actions in providing nursing care for their patients/customers. Providing customer service is one   of hospital effort to achieve patient’s satisfaction. Even though the term of customer service is common in business domain, it can be used in health care industry such as a hospital. Providing customer service in a private hospital leads to increase satisfaction for those who receive the service and creates loyal customers. This study aimed to describe the patient’s perceptions of customer service provided by nurses in a private hospital in Indonesia. This was a preliminary study conducted in in-patient ward in a private hospital in Medan, Indonesia. Ten patients who had been admitted as inpatient for at least three days were involved in this study as participants. in-depth interviews and field notes were used to collect data. Transcript verbatim was made after an in-depth interview and analyzed using content analysis technique. The results of this study showed that there were 5 common themes related to patient’s perceptions of customer service provided by nurses in a private hospital. The themes were (1) the function of customer service based on patients opinion (nurses make the patients feel cared,  feel respected,  and feel heard, as well as nurses must be communicative in providing services), (2) nurses meet patient needs by providing responsive care (prompt nurses action, fulfilled nursing care for patients), (3) the need to establish a trusting relationship in the interaction between nurses and patients (building a trusting relationship, establishing a good interaction in nursing services, friendly attitude of nurses in providing services), (4) nurses in giving medicines are less communicative (less explanation on the medicine information, less explanation on the change of medications), (5) and, expectations of patients to nurses in providing nursing services (health education provided by nurses, frequent nurses observations). It is recommended that private hospitals in Indonesia pay more attention to customer service provided by nurses in providing nursing care to patients and improve nurses’ knowledge and capabilities on customer service so that the nurses will apply the knowledge and capabilities in providing nursing care for the patients or customers.