Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Master of Science

Program

Surgery

Supervisor

Cristancho, Sayra

2nd Supervisor

Jones, Sarah A

Co-Supervisor

Abstract

Patient satisfaction has become a growing area of study within health care. Existing hospital- wide satisfaction tools don’t provide the specificity that various departments require to truly get a sense of where they stand in terms of patient satisfaction. Further, many of these tools fail to consider an important component associated with satisfaction, patient expectations. Currently, there is no patient satisfaction tool specific to adult day-surgery patients that has been developed through a careful exploration of patient expectations. In this qualitative study, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews on patients undergoing outpatient surgery to explore expectations. We performed a thematic analysis on our data and distilled six themes of expectations: Communication, Safety, Responsiveness, Compassionate Care, Flow, and Creating Confidence. Using these themes, we developed a preliminary Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire for Day-Surgery Patients. The resulting questionnaire can be used by institutions to gather patient satisfaction data in those undergoing day-surgery.

Summary for Lay Audience

In today’s surgical world, it is no longer sufficient to measure only clinical outcomes such as death and complication rates. In order to gain a holistic appreciation of how well we are serving our surgical patients we need to capture a missing puzzle piece: the patient voice. One way to do this is by measuring patient satisfaction. Existing hospital-wide satisfaction surveys do not provide the specificity to assess patients’ satisfaction in the delivery of care across various different departments in the hospital. For example, a tool that measures patient satisfaction in patients who undergo surgery and are admitted for a hospital stay, are likely not specific enough to measure patient satisfaction in those patients who come to hospital for surgery and then are discharged the same day. Further, many of these tools fail to consider an important component associated with satisfaction, patient expectations. Currently, there are no patient satisfaction tools specific to those undergoing day-surgery that have been developed based on a careful exploration of patient expectations.

In this study, we conducted a series of loosely structured interviews on patients undergoing outpatient surgery to explore what their expectations were for the day of surgery. We analyzed our data using a set of steps called thematic analysis to help us characterize and identify what sort of expectations patients had. We used the analysis to help distill all of the information regarding patient expectations into six different themes: Communication, Safety, Responsiveness, Compassionate Care, Flow, and Creating Confidence. Using these themes, we developed a preliminary Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire for Day-Surgery Patients. The resulting questionnaire can be used by institutions to gather patient satisfaction data in those undergoing day-surgery.

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