Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess health care providers’ satisfaction with the service provided by the clinical laboratory personnel at Nekemte Referral Hospital, Western Ethiopia to determine the level of satisfaction of health care providers on clinical laboratory services. A cross sectional study was conducted from March to April, 2014 at Nekemte Referral Hospital. The data was collected from 105 randomly selected health professionals. The collected data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 statistical software. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess the association between treatment outcomes and predictor variables. The overall satisfaction for all health care professionals on clinical laboratory services was 62.86%, while specific professional level of satisfaction was 51.2% for nurses, 65.0% for physicians, 75.0% for health officer (Assistant physician) and 85.7% for midwifes. Lack of adequacy of laboratory materials, absence of a timely report of critical values, lack of getting urgent results on time, and inadequacy of test menu on laboratory request forms were areas mentioned as sources of dissatisfaction. The overall degree of customers’ satisfaction with laboratory services was good. But the study showed room for improvement. In addition to taking intervention, the root causes of dissatisfaction need to be investigated and means of improving the satisfaction level should be designed and implemented.

Key words: Satisfaction, health care providers, clinical laboratory services, Nekemte Referral Hospital.