Mothers’ Satisfaction with Hospital Care in Children

Author(s):

Reza Haj Esfandiari and Ali Arjmand Shabestari*

Introduction: Patient satisfaction has been considered as a reliable tool for assessing the quality of care performed in recent decades. In the health care system, parents are considered as supporter of the children; therefore, they represent the patient’s views. The aim of this study was to determine the satisfaction of mothers of hospitalized children in the pediatric ward.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was performed using a Children’s Family Satisfaction Questionnaire (PFSQ) by which 600 mothers were interviewed in different pediatric wards of Amir Kabir Hospital in Arak in 2015. Data were analyzed using SPSS software and descriptive statistics.

Results: The mean age of mothers was determined as 29.45 and the mean age of children was 3.14. In the area of medical care, nursing and welfare services, the most satisfaction was related to “treatment and focus”, “measures management to reduce the patient’s fever “ and “easy admission “and the lowest satisfaction was found to be related to “full response to parenting questions”, “ answers to questions about the patient’s situation in plain language”, “The quality of food and” the proper environment for children’s play.” Overall, the degree of satisfaction in terms of nursing and medical care was “good” to “fairly good”, while it was found to be “fairly good” to “moderate” for welfare services. Also, there was a significant relationship between satisfaction with the child’s sex, mother’s occupation, place of residence, parents’ education, the reason for the current hospitalization, the reason for the previous hospitalization and also the type of child insurance (p<0.05).

Conclusion: This study showed that nurses and physicians should have open and effective communication with patients in order to satisfy the mothers and improve the quality of care of the patient, in addition medical staff should adapt their actions to the wishes of the parents. Post-discharge education about treatment and care interventions should be provided more than before. Additionally, Measures should also be taken to increase welfare services for children.