Analysis of Patient's Satisfaction with Phlebotomy Services in NABH Accredited Neuropsychiatric Hospital: An Effective Tool for Improvement.

Introduction: Patient's satisfaction is the need of the hour and one of the most important quality indicators in the laboratory medicine.

Aim: To assess the patient's satisfaction with phlebotomy services in a neuropsychiatric hospital by a structured questionnaire with grading scale. Also, identify the problems causing dissatisfactions and to undertake necessary Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA).

Materials and Methods: Total 1200 patients were randomly selected over a period of two months (June and July 2016). A structured self designed questionnaire (feedback form) was devised in both Hindi and English languages containing ten questions with a grading scale for each question. It also included suggestions from the users. All the selected patients or their attendants filled up this questionnaire. At the same time, they were also interviewed by phlebotomy staff. A statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS version 16.0 software and Likert scale.

Results: A total of 94% of the patients were satisfied with the phlebotomy services. Almost 30.0% patients found the phlebotomy services to be very good, but the majority of them (40.5%) found it to be good and another 23.5% found it to be satisfactory while, 4% found the services to be poor and 2% found it to be very poor. The highest rate of satisfaction (4.21) was noted in case of parameter-ease to find collection sample room and lowest rate of satisfaction (3.92) was scored by the parameter-staff's wearing proper uniform. Depending upon the deficient areas some corrective actions were suggested such as strict compliance of personal protective equipments, regular training to improve technical skill, knowledge and behaviour with emphasis on cleanliness of work area.

Conclusion: Even though the overall patient's satisfaction was high, there were areas which needed our attention such as waiting time for phlebotomy procedure, lack of proper sitting arrangement, techniques of sample collection, knowledge of universal precautions etc. Appropriate corrective and preventive actions were taken to solve the problems. Thereby, feedback proved effective in maintenance and improvement of phlebotomy services.