Patient satisfaction with post-operative surgical services and associated factors at Addis Ababa City government tertiary hospitals’ surgical ward, cross-sectional study, 2022

INTRODUCTION: patient satisfaction is an attitude resulting from a person's general orientation towards the total experience of health care. The study was done with the aim of evaluating post-operative patient satisfaction level with the quality of service provided at the surgical wards; determining how much factors related to physicians, nursing, laboratory, and information provision service influence satisfaction level; and determining factors impacting patient satisfaction level. METHODS: a hospital-based quantitative cross-sectional study design was conducted in six Addis Ababa City Government tertiary hospitals from November 4(th) to December 13(th), 2022. Patients who had major operations done at the government hospitals from November 21(st) to December 5(th), 2022, were included in the study population. A pre-tested, structured, and Amharic-version questionnaire was used to interview patients. A bivariate and multivariate logistic regression model was used to identify the variables that had an association with the dependent variable. P-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS: a total of 287 patients participated in the research, providing a response rate of 95%. Of the total participants, 144 were males (50.8%) and 143 were females (49.5%). The overall patient satisfaction level with surgical ward service is 96.2%. The level of patient satisfaction with nursing services is 94.8%, with physician's services it is 98.6%, with the facility it is 92.3%, and with the provision of information about post-operative complications it is 69.7%. Those who have above-first-degree educational status are less satisfied (66.7%) than patients with other levels of educational status. Only the patients' residency showed a small level of association (r= 0.145, p=0.014) with overall patient satisfaction with surgical ward service among the demographic components. The two variables that are strongly correlated with patient satisfaction are the adequacy of the time ward nurses spent with patients during evaluation and treatment (r = 0.503, p = 0.000) and adequate nurses' response to patients' calls (r = 0.498, p = 0.000). Post-operative patient satisfaction with surgical ward nursing service, physician service, hospital facilities, and the provision of information about post-op complications explain about 40.9 percent of the variation in the overall patient satisfaction with post-op care provided at the surgical ward. Patient satisfaction with nursing service has more significant effect with overall patient satisfaction than the other variables (β = 0.266, p =0.0002). CONCLUSION: post-operative patients at Addis Ababa City Government Tertiary Hospitals expressed a very high degree of satisfaction with the care they received in the surgical wards. The study also found that patients were generally less satisfied with the information they were given on drugs, side effects, and available treatment options. Another factor identified in the study that caused unhappiness was the unavailability of some pharmacy and laboratory services.