Compassionate and respectful care among outpatient clients at public health facilities in Northwest Ethiopia: A mixed-methods study

INTRODUCTION: Compassionate and respectful care is a pillar for improving health-seeking behaviour. It has given much attention globally, following the concerns that healthcare often falls significantly; however, less research emphasis was paid in the last decade. Therefore, this study aims to assess compassionate and respectful care and associated factors among outpatient clients at public health facilities in Northwest Ethiopia, 2020. METHODS: A facility-based quantitative cross-sectional study supplemented with the qualitative findings was conducted from 30 February to 30 March 2020. A semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect the quantitative data among 593 participants. Systematic and purposive sampling techniques were used to select the quantitative and qualitative participants, respectively. A semi-structured interview guide was also employed for the qualitative data collection. Epi-Data version 4.6 and SPSS version 25 were used for data entry and analysis, respectively. The bi-variable and multivariable logistic regression model was fitted to identify the factors associated with each outcome variable (compassionate and respectful care separately). Adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) and p-value less than 0.05 were used to declare the strength and factors statistically associated with the outcome variables. RESULTS: Overall, 72.8% and 82.6% of the respondents experienced compassionate and respectful care, respectively. Patients attending primary or above education (AOR: 0.35; 95% CI: 0.21–0.59), attending at the hospital (AOR: 0.59; 95% CI: 0.39–0.88), new clients (AOR: 0.33; 95% CI: 0.16–0.70) and service users who had three or more visits (AOR: 0.34; 95% CI: 0.17–0.71) were negatively associated with compassionate care. On the other hand, female patients (AOR = 0.53; 95% CI: 0.32–0.87), aged over 36 years (AOR = 0.43; 95% CI: 0.20–0.90), primary or above school attended clients (AOR = 0.18; 95% CI: 0.09–0.36), waiting two or more hours (AOR = 0.28; 95% CI: 0.13–0.62), and use public or private transport access (AOR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.29–0.83) were negatively associated with a respectful care. CONCLUSION: Compassionate and respectful care provided to the outpatient clients in public health facilities of northwest Ethiopia was high. However, our result suggests that immediate actions are necessary to address respectful and compassionate care at hospitals, and hospital management should adopt mitigation measures. Consideration should be given to foster patient-centric services and educate the health care workers about compassionate and respectful care.