Assessment of Patient Experiences in an Academic Hospital in Saudi Arabia

Introduction Patient continuous assessment is an important component of patient-centered healthcare systems and requires the identification of the services and resources of these systems to ensure patient satisfaction. This study aimed to determine the factors that affect patient satisfaction, identify patients' unmet health care and informational needs, and suggest measures to fill these gaps in healthcare systems. Methods A cross-sectional study included 235 patients who were admitted to the medical ward of an educational tertiary healthcare center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between June-September 2016. A self-administered questionnaire based on the Arabic version of the "échelle de qualité des soins en hospitalisation" or the quality of care in hospitalization scale (ESQ-H) consisting of two subscales that measured their satisfaction with the services received was offered to the study participants. We analyzed the data to identify factors associated with patient dissatisfaction using IBM SPSS® Statistics Version 21.0. Results The patients included 145 males (61.7%) and 90 females (38.3%). The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.933 for the questionnaire. In the subscale associated with the quality of the medical information patients received, three independent variables were associated with higher patient satisfaction: planned patients' hospital stay (p<0.001), patients' health improvement (p<0.001), and patients' overall life satisfaction (p<0.001). In the subscale associated with patients' relationship with medical staff and the daily routine of the medical ward, four independent variables were significant: male gender (p=0.007), patients, if the hospital stay was planned (p=0.009), improvement of patients' health (p<0.001), and patients' overall life satisfaction (p=0.006). Conclusion Patients' satisfaction level was "very good" with the medical information subscale and "excellent" with the relationship subscale. We found that although patients were satisfied with some aspects of their health care, other aspects required more attention; hence, the resolution of patients' unmet health care and informational needs should be prioritized by stakeholders to improve patient satisfaction. Furthermore, the patients should be informed about what they can expect during their upcoming hospital stay, their overall life satisfaction should be considered, and patients with issues related to their life satisfaction should be appointed a social worker.