Organizational factors impacting on patient satisfaction: A cross sectional examination of service climate and linkages to nurses’ effort and performance
Section snippets
Background
Patient satisfaction is defined as an individual's reaction to salient aspects of their hospital care (Pascoe, 1983). It is an attitudinal response that occurs when an individual's cognitive evaluation of aspects of care meet or exceed their personal subjective standards (Crow et al., 2002). Patient satisfaction is a critical health care outcome indicator; the provision of patient centred care is an important component of a high-quality health care system. Patients who are satisfied with their
Setting and design
This study focused on units (or wards) of two government-funded hospitals in Australia. The first hospital was a tertiary hospital in a metropolitan area. The second hospital was a smaller urban hospital. These hospitals were chosen because they both had medical, surgical, and mental health services and had managers who agreed to allow external researchers to conduct research. An additional four major hospitals were approached to participate but declined because they were conducting internal
Results
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and correlations among the unit-level variables. This table shows that, overall patients were satisfied with their care. Patient satisfaction was associated with nurses’ perception that there was a positive service climate, nurses’ perceptions that they direct their effort towards providing technical care and NUM ratings of task performance. On average, nurses’ perceived that the service climate was fair. Perceptions of service climate were
Discussion
This study integrated the construct of patient satisfaction into the organizational psychology literature. In doing so, we provided a unique perspective on understanding patient satisfaction. Few studies have focussed on the organizational environment or nurse performance as a predictor of patient satisfaction or the mechanisms linking the organizational environment and patient satisfaction. By focusing on how the hospital and its nurses impact on patient satisfaction, this study attempted to
Conclusion
In conclusion, we utilized the organizational and management literature to provide a unique perspective on patient satisfaction with care. We proposed and tested a multi-source model that provides management within the health care industries the potential to increase customer satisfaction. This model provides initial evidence that units where employees perceive that service is rewarded and supported have employees who engage in additional effort and, in turn, perform effectively. Such effective
Conflict of interest
None declared.
Funding
None.
Ethical approval
The University of Queensland and the participating hospitals.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the management, nurses, and patients at the participating hospitals, including Toowoomba Hospital, for their assistance with data collection. We also thank Andrew Neal for his comments on a previous version of this manuscript
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