A Study of Dissatisfied Service Operations at Different Stages in a University Hospital Emergency Room
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Li, Ying-Yu
Abstract
With the trend of increasing number of patients at emergency room and average daily number of patients at emergency room in every hospital in Taiwan, we saw over-crowdedness and even emergency room violence arising from dissatisfied patients or families, which shows the necessity and room for improvement of current emergency room satisfaction.
The study conducted one-on-one personal interviews toward patients’ family members at emergency room in National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), and the interview took place at different stages of emergency room operation processes. The study aimed to investigate the dissatisfaction items and factors of patients’ family members at different stages of processes.
Most of the patients'' family members are satisfied with the stage of check-in (enter into the emergency room, triage and registration). The study showed that the service speed was fast under this stage, and the volunteers’ assistance reduced the anxiety of patients’ family member when they just arrived at the emergency room.
The main reasons of dissatisfaction with waiting times for physician diagnosis included that anxiety and worries about patients made waits seem longer, those family members who had not been to NTUH lacked reasonable expectation of waiting times which is more in line with the current situation, and some patients’ family members did not understand the relationship between the triage level and order of physician diagnosis. When being seen by a doctor, hurried diagnosis, poor explanation made patients’ family members dissatisfied.
The reasons of dissatisfaction at service delivery stage (examination, treatment, and observation) included that the waiting process had the characteristics of pre-process waits, uncertain waits, unexplained waits and solo waits, which made waiting times seem longer, and staff let patients’ family members wait longer than the time period that staff had promised them. In addition, lack of device to create in-process waits waiting environment so that patients’ family members have no way of knowing the system was overloaded and staff were busy, which caused the tendency for them to interpreted the situation as the carelessness of the hospital rather than something the hospital couldn’t control, therefore, deepened the dissatisfaction of the patients’ family members. Under service delivery stage, patients’ family members were dissatisfied when the physician service didn’t perform enough assurance and reliability, regarding the services provided by nurses, patients’ family members didn’t require high level of assurance and reliability, but valued responsiveness and empathy of the services. In addition, patients’ family members often have to accompany patients in the emergency room for longer time, so the good and bad of environmental equipment had a more significant impact on the feelings of patients’ family members.
Subjects
Emergency room satisfaction
Family members
Different stages
Dissatisfied Service
Dissatisfaction factor
SDGs
Type
thesis
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