Level of compassionate health care service provision and its associated factors among health professionals working in public hospitals of Addis Ababa: health professionals’ perspective

BACKGROUND: Compassionate health care service is important for good clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. However, complaints of non-compassionate care became very familiar and popular grievance of the community in the health care system. The aim of this study was to assess the level of compassionate health care service provision and its associated factors among health professionals working in public hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. METHODS: A facility based cross sectional study was conducted among six public hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Simple random sampling and systematic sampling methods were applied to select hospitals and each study participants respectively. Data were collected from 400 participants using a self-administered structured questionnaire. The mean of compassionate health care was taken as the cut point to label respondent as good and poor compassionate health care service provider. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regressions were done to determine the associated factors for compassionate care provision. Variables with p values < 0.05 at the multivariable analysis were considered as significantly associated with compassionate care provision. RESULTS: Only 48.0% of health care professionals provided good compassionate care. Learned to be compassionate (AOR = 5.083; CI 95% 2.69, 9.58); patient and their family realistic expectation (AOR = 2.24; CI 95% 1.07, 4.66) were found to be significantly associated with good compassionate health care provision. CONCLUSIONS: and recommendations: Good compassionate health care service provision in Addis Ababa hospitals was very low. Teaching health science and medical students to be compassionate and ensuring health care clients to have realistic expectation may be important to farther enhance compassionate health care service provision.