Patient satisfaction with nursing care at a university hospital in Turkey

Patient satisfaction is an important measure of service quality (Sg) in hea lth care organizations. Patients' satisfaction and their expectations of ca re are valid indicators of quality nursing care. This article reports the r esults of a survey patient satisfaction with nursing care, administered by interview to 422 adults discharged from a university hospital in Turkey. Th e direct measurement of patient satisfaction with nursing care is a now phe nomenon for this university hospital, and this was the first time that such an evaluation had been done in this particular hospital. In this study, SE RVQUAL scale was used for determining patient satisfaction with nursing car e. Weighted scores in dimensions of SERVQUAL were generally low, and there were statistically significant differences in means paired t-tests (p < .01 ). Sociodemographic characteristics of the patients (age, gender, education level) with regard to patient satisfaction were determined. Several statis tically significant differences were found between the sociodemographic cha racteristics and weighted scores for dimensions of SERVQUAL (p < 0.5). Acco rding to results, the Sg gap scores for five dimensions were negative to me et expectations. The negative scores for tangibles, reliability, responsive ness, assurance, and empathy indicate areas needing improvement. In this ho spital, results of this study support the need for nurses to take steps to improve patient satisfaction with nursing care.