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Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology

AIM: Client satisfaction gained great importance in health care as a measurement of service quality. One of the most popular methods to evaluate client satisfaction is the SERVQUAL inquiry which measures service quality by evaluating client expectations and services towards a service in five dimensi...

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Autores principales: Gregório, Hugo, Santos, Patricia, Pires, Isabel, Prada, Justina, Queiroga, Felisbina Luísa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Veterinary World 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5146310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27956781
http://dx.doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2016.1275-1281
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author Gregório, Hugo
Santos, Patricia
Pires, Isabel
Prada, Justina
Queiroga, Felisbina Luísa
author_facet Gregório, Hugo
Santos, Patricia
Pires, Isabel
Prada, Justina
Queiroga, Felisbina Luísa
author_sort Gregório, Hugo
collection PubMed
description AIM: Client satisfaction gained great importance in health care as a measurement of service quality. One of the most popular methods to evaluate client satisfaction is the SERVQUAL inquiry which measures service quality by evaluating client expectations and services towards a service in five dimensions: Tangibles, Empathy, Assurance, Reliability and Responsiveness. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In order to evaluate if owners of pets with cancer constitute a distinctive group from the general pet owner population and if these differences were perceived by the hospital staff we applied a SERVQUAL questionnaire to 51 owners of pet with cancer, 68 owners from the general pet population and 14 staff members. RESULTS: Owners of oncologic pets had different expectations of an ideal service granting importance to Assurance questions (6.75 vs 6.5, p= 0.045) while showing unmet needs in Reliability and Empathy dimensions. Veterinarians failed to understand these specificities and over evaluated characteristics of Tangible dimension (6.75 vs 6.25, p=0.027). CONCLUSION: Owners of pet with cancer seem to constitute a specific subpopulation with special needs and veterinary staff should invest resources towards Assurance instead of privileging tangible aspects of veterinary services. By aligning professionals expectations with those of pet owners veterinarians can achieve better client satisfaction, improved compliance and stronger doctor-owner relationships.
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spelling pubmed-51463102016-12-12 Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology Gregório, Hugo Santos, Patricia Pires, Isabel Prada, Justina Queiroga, Felisbina Luísa Vet World Research Article AIM: Client satisfaction gained great importance in health care as a measurement of service quality. One of the most popular methods to evaluate client satisfaction is the SERVQUAL inquiry which measures service quality by evaluating client expectations and services towards a service in five dimensions: Tangibles, Empathy, Assurance, Reliability and Responsiveness. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In order to evaluate if owners of pets with cancer constitute a distinctive group from the general pet owner population and if these differences were perceived by the hospital staff we applied a SERVQUAL questionnaire to 51 owners of pet with cancer, 68 owners from the general pet population and 14 staff members. RESULTS: Owners of oncologic pets had different expectations of an ideal service granting importance to Assurance questions (6.75 vs 6.5, p= 0.045) while showing unmet needs in Reliability and Empathy dimensions. Veterinarians failed to understand these specificities and over evaluated characteristics of Tangible dimension (6.75 vs 6.25, p=0.027). CONCLUSION: Owners of pet with cancer seem to constitute a specific subpopulation with special needs and veterinary staff should invest resources towards Assurance instead of privileging tangible aspects of veterinary services. By aligning professionals expectations with those of pet owners veterinarians can achieve better client satisfaction, improved compliance and stronger doctor-owner relationships. Veterinary World 2016-11 2016-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC5146310/ /pubmed/27956781 http://dx.doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2016.1275-1281 Text en Copyright: © Gregório, et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Gregório, Hugo
Santos, Patricia
Pires, Isabel
Prada, Justina
Queiroga, Felisbina Luísa
Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology
title Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology
title_full Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology
title_fullStr Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology
title_full_unstemmed Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology
title_short Comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the SERVQUAL methodology
title_sort comparison of veterinary health services expectations and perceptions between oncologic pet owners, non-oncologic pet owners and veterinary staff using the servqual methodology
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5146310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27956781
http://dx.doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2016.1275-1281
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