Level of patient’s satisfaction in gynaecological practice at a south west Nigerian specialist hospital

The health sector occupies an enormously important position in ensuring sustainable overall socio-economic advancement in developing countries. Healthy people make a healthy nation and also contribute to economic growth. Satisfaction is the contentment one feels when one has fulfilled a desire, need, or expectation. Poor quality is costly to clients, to programmes and to the society overall. People's perception about quality of care often determines whether they seek and continue to use services. This study evaluated the level of patient’s satisfaction in gynaecological practice at the state specialist hospital Akure. This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study. Questionnaires of the Likert-like form was used to obtain information from consenting patients on various factors that determines or have effect on their level of satisfaction while accessing gynaecological care services at the gynaecology clinic of State Specialist Hospital, Akure. Systematic sampling method was used to recruit patients by selecting every second patient serially as they present. Three hundred and eight consenting gynaecological patients were recruited into the study. Data was analysed with the Statistical Package for Social sciences (SPSS) 20.0. Majority of the respondents 295 (95.7%) were satisfied with the morning time clinic schedule. More percentage of respondents were very satisfied with attending doctor being male (52.9%) than if the attending doctor was female (26.3%). Most patients (53.3%) were not satisfied with having to go outside the hospital to get some of their investigations done. Most patients (44.6%) were not satisfied with the level of availability of drugs in the hospital as they still go out to buy drugs. Vast majority of the respondents (89.2%) were either satisfied or very satisfied with the behavior and competence of the attending doctors and nurses. In conclusion, client's satisfaction is reflected by their happy expression about the care they receive, where and how they access the care. There is need for health care givers to continue and improve on aspects of care that gives patients satisfaction and discourage those that make the patients dissatisfied.