Factors Affecting Quality of Emergency Service in Iran’s Military Hospitals: A Qualitative Study

INTRODUCTION: Quality is a key factor for the success of any organization. Moreover, accessing quality in the emergency department is highly significant due to the sensitive and complex role of this department in hospitals as well as the healthcare and medical treatment system. This study aimed to identify, from the perspective of medical experts and nurses serving in the military health and medical treatment system, the factors that affect the quality of emergency service provided in selected military hospitals in Iran. METHODS: This qualitative research was performed in Valiaser Hospital of Tehran (Iran) in 2015, using the framework analysis method. The purposive sampling technique was used for data collection. A total of 14 participants included two emergency medicine specialists, four general physicians, two senior nurses (holding M.Sc. degrees), and six nurses (holding B.Sc. degree). Data were collected through semistructured interviews. Sampling continued until data saturation occurred. The Atlas/Ti software was employed for data analysis. RESULTS: Four basic themes emerged as the effective factors on the quality of emergency services, namely, structural themes, process/performance themes, outcome themes, and environmental/contextual themes. Moreover, through a framework analysis, 47 subthemes were specified and summarized as indicators of the different aspects of the main themes. CONCLUSION: The factors affecting the quality of emergency services in Iran’s selected military hospitals are especially complicated due to the diversity of the missions involved; thus, different factors can influence this quality. Therefore, an effort should be made to tackle the existing obstacles, facilitate the identification of these effective factors, and promotion of the quality of healthcare services.