Histopathology quality assurance: A general survey of physicians' satisfaction in Nigeria

Background: The monitoring of clients' satisfaction is paramount to the success of a quality assurance scheme in a histopathology laboratory, from the accessioning of specimens to the delivery of the reports to physicians. This study was designed to determine the levels of physician satisfaction with certain aspects of pathologists' report including accuracy, content, and turnaround time (TAT) in Nigeria. Materials and Methods: Self-administered questionnaires were given to physicians from six hospitals with on-site pathology laboratories. The respondents were required to grade their responses as very satisfied, satisfied, undecided, dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied, on the report accuracy, report completeness, report timeliness, and ease of access to a pathologist, on a Likert-like scale. Results: There were 251 respondents consisting of 197 males, 50 females, and 4 who declined to disclose their gender. The respondents gave a total of 1198 responses. These included very satisfied (54, 4.5%), satisfied (580, 48.4%), undecided (290, 24.2%), dissatisfied (236, 19.7%), and very dissatisfied (38, 3.2%). Physicians from surgery specialty were the mostly contented with histopathology services (19.2 satisfaction rate, n = 1155), followed by responses from obstetrics and gynecology (15.2) and pediatrics (7.3). The specialty of the physician has no statistical influence on levels of satisfaction. Physicians were most satisfied with the diagnostic accuracy of reports (26.7%, n = 634) and least satisfied with report timeliness (12.8%, n = 634). Conclusion: This cross-sectional survey of levels of physician's satisfaction with histopathology service in different hospitals in Nigeria suggests that even though most express satisfaction with the accuracy of reports, there remains low satisfaction with TAT.