Satisfaction with laboratory services among patients attending outpatient departments of regional referral hospitals in Dar es salaam, Tanzania

Abstract

Introduction: Patient satisfaction is one of the key determinants for clinical outcome, compliance to medical treatment, and therefore health status. Satisfaction to laboratory service satisfaction can significantly enhance patients’ quality of life and enable health service providers to determine specific problems of clients. Monitoring client’s satisfaction in clinical laboratory is therefore an important and useful for quality and service improvement. Moreover, knowing factors associated with such satisfaction can be an entry point towards improving it. Despite such importance, only handful evidence is available, and none is from Tanzania. Therefore, this study evaluated patients’ satisfaction and factors associated with satisfaction with laboratory services among patients above 18 years attending regional referral hospital laboratories in Dar es salaam, Tanzania. Methodology: This descriptive cross-sectional study design was conducted in the three regional referral hospitals in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The three referral hospitals are Amana, Temeke and Mwananyamala referral regional hospitals. The study included a total of 406 patients aged 18 years and above attending the laboratory from the Outpatients department (OPD). Data was collected using face to face interviews. The sampling frame used to pick the participants was the list of patients who needed laboratory service per each day of the data collection in the hospital. The systematic sampling method was used to get the study participants for each hospital. Thus, since the number of questionnaires to be filled in each day was 20 (basing on 20 minutes estimated time of completion of one interview), the sampling interval was calculated by dividing the number of patients in need of laboratory services per day by number of questionnaire to be filled per day. After obtaining the sampling interval, the first study participant was selected randomly. Thereafter the calculated sampling interval (nth) was used to pick the subsequent patients to be interviewed. Dependent variable was patients’ satisfaction while independent variables included sociodemographic, socioeconomic, and facility characteristics. Data analysis were conducted using descriptive and logistic regression analyses to address the specific objectives using SPSS version 20 software. P-value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant.

Results: Only about 39.2% of 406 participants were satisfied with laboratory services in the three referral hospitals in Dar es salaam, Tanzania. Mwananyamala had the higher proportion of satisfaction compared to Temeke and Amana. Based on multiple logistic regression analyses: compared to young patients, those who aged above 58 years were less likely to be satisfied with laboratory services (p=0.009 ). There was no significant association between satisfaction and wealth index. However, compared to those with primary education, those with higher education levels were less likely to be satisfied with laboratory services. Conclusion and recommendations: This study reported low satisfaction with laboratory services (39%) among patients attending the regional referral laboratories. Such pattern has a great impact on patients as they can opt not to go for laboratory tests and take medication without proper diagnosis. This study also reported older patients, those with higher than primary education and professional occupation were not satisfied with laboratory services.