Current Practice and Opinions of Surgical Patients and Medical Care Providers in the Day Case Unit at Salmaniya Medical Complex in Kingdom of Bahrain

Abstract

Abstract : Objective: The aim of this thesis is to provide a base- line data on which recommendations can be developed to improve the current practice and utilization of Day Case Unit (DCU) at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC), Bahrain. The objectives include: describing the current practices and services and exploring the factors contributing to patient's and doctors' satisfaction including their views on improvement of the health services of the unit. Study method: A descriptive cross-sectional study. Two structured questionnaires were developed. A total of 255 subject covering doctors, nurses and patients participated in answering the questionnaires. The data were collected in June 2006. The analysis was performed using SPSS version 13. The analysis included descriptive and advanced inferential statistics. Results: 79% of doctors and 93% of the patients were satisfied with the decisions to conduct the surgical procedure in the DCU. The overall satisfaction average was 73.7%. Patients average was the highest at 83.2%, while doctors was the lowest at only 66.7% and nurses satisfaction averaged to 71.3%. The lowest average variables were: the time of operation (patients), patients to doctors ratio (doctors & nurses) and the DCU environment in general (nurses). In patient's age (40 years or above; highest satisfaction), monthly income (BD 1,200 or more) and marital status (married) were found to have a positive effect on satisfaction. A negative effect was found with education level (illiterate; lowest satisfaction) and frequency of visits to DCU (visited twice or more). No significant statistical difference was found to support any effect on satisfaction by gender, how patient was brought to DCU, experience and frequency of utilization. Conclusion: The level of satisfaction currently can be improved by 26.3% in the specific satisfaction variables; the study highlighted the relationship between some influential variables on the satisfaction variables. Therefore, these relationships should be considered while developing future plans of improvement of the utilization of DCU. Recommendations: The study suggests potential areas for improvement of utilization, including: physical expansion of DCU, updating existing instructions, reduce the waiting period for appointment, reducing the time of operation, improving the number of patients allocated to doctors, align staff to patients ratio with the international standards, and systematic review and evaluation of DCU satisfaction levels.