Physicians’ and Nurses’ Satisfaction with the Clinical Laboratory Service

Abstract

Background: Medical laboratory service is a critical component of the quality health care system and provides essential data for diagnosing diseases, guiding treatment, determining drug resistance, disease prevention and control, identifying diseases. The study aim: To assess physicians’ and nurses’ satisfaction with the service provided by the laboratory service. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 195 nurses and physicians from January to March 2022. Results: Overall level of satisfaction was 51.1% for nurses and 51.5% for physicians. Lack of consistency in the quality of laboratory work, absence of a timely report of critical values, test turnaround time, acceptability of results released, and reporting of reference ranges with test results were areas mentioned as sources of dissatisfaction. Conclusions: The study showed wide room for improvement. The laboratory needs to improve in a wide variety of areas as well as engage physicians and nurses in the process. In addition to taking intervention, root causes of dissatisfaction need to be investigated and means of improving the satisfaction level should be designed and implemented. Further research to understand the root causes of customer dissatisfaction in the laboratory is warranted to improve the quality of the laboratory.