Customers' satisfaction toward service at Kantang Hospital, Kantang district, Trang province

Abstract

Kantang Hospital is a community hospital that plans to go to hospitalaccreditation but has yet to assess its customer’s satisfactions and needs. The goal ofthis cross-sectional descriptive research was to assess the quality of services and thelevel of satisfactions, and to determine the association between these two variables.The target population was all patients who were admitted to the hospital and dischargedbetween June 15 to August 31, 2003. A stratified sampling scheme was used to identify380 study participants from three wards of Inpatient Department, that is Male Ward,Female Ward, and Postpartum Ward.A self-administered questionnaire was used among all participants. The studyfound that Kantang Hospital’s customers’ tend to be older population, ages between 36- 75 years old (58.7%), 68.9% of the respondents were female, 73% were married, and60.8% reported their occupation to be agriculture and employee. The highest level ofeducation was high school or lower, at 92.9%. The highest level of income wasreported to be 2,001 – 6,000 baht per month. The level of customers’ satisfactiontoward services was found to be at moderate to high, at 99.7%; its perception towardservice was moderate to high, at 99.5%; and its accessibility was also at moderate tohigh, at 98.1%. The association among those variables was significant in a positivedirection. When comparing satisfaction with gender, types of ward, and customer’soccupation, the study found that there is difference of satisfaction; but type of bed, timeof service, customer’s age, education level and marital status appeared to have no effecton satisfaction. Sixty-four of the 380 respondents provided written comments: 26.56%complained about repeated menu, 18.75% complained about cleanliness of toilets andbathrooms, 15.62% criticized staff’s manner.Overall findings indicated that customers of Kantang Hospital trust technicalquality of the services, but believe that staff should improve on delivery of the services,especially, unbecoming professional manner. In the future, quality of care should bemeasured from an inclusive perspective that includes those of the providers, theorganization and their customers. In addition, the study should consider alldepartments in order to be able to compare quality of services for improvement in thefuture.