2012 Volume 13 Issue 1 Pages 17-21
This study aims to identify what can relieve anxiety and dissatisfaction of inpatients in the hospital. The subjects were patients who got out of the hospital with support or had been in the hospital for a long period of time. 423 discharged patients and their families were surveyed with questionnaires (response rate 44.4%). The patient satisfaction during the period for discharge arrangement (discharge satisfaction) and during a whole period of hospitalization (inpatient satisfaction) was separately asked. Most of responding patients and their families had felt anxious about therapy, prognosis and their post-discharge lives, and also had complained about their short length of hospitalization, unsatisfactory effect of therapy, and insufficient explanation by medical staff.
50.4% of respondents had experienced psychological change where they came to a fuller understanding of their present situations and were relieved from their anxiety by communicating with medical staff. X２ test showed that the psychological change was significantly related to communication with medical doctors and satisfaction with response of medical staff with whom patients had consulted about their anxiety (response satisfaction). Meanwhile, their consultation with the staff in the discharge support section had no correlation to the psychological change, but to response satisfaction. The psychological change, response satisfaction, inpatient satisfaction and discharge satisfaction had positive correlation to each other. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the discharge satisfaction was related to both patients' psychological change and response satisfaction, and that the inpatient satisfaction was only related to response satisfaction. The psychological change and response satisfaction can be separate factors of inpatient's satisfaction.
Consequently, it is inferred that a sense of procedural fairness brought by interaction between medical staff and patients should take an important role in patient satisfaction with medical treatment which cannot always give good effects.
