Healthcare Quality and Patient Satisfaction

Dear Colleagues,

Patient safety, satisfaction and good quality of care are considered to be a right for all patients and the responsibility of all staff within hospitals (Zineldin, 2006).

Human error is almost unavoidable, even for the most experienced, trained and qualified physicians and other health-care providers. Medical errors (MEs) are one of the leading causes of death and injury in many countries.

More people die and are injured as a result of MEs than as a result of AIDS, breast cancer or car accidents. In all, 23 percent of Europeans argue that they have been directly affected by a ME, personally, or in the family. In all, 18 percent indicate that they or their family members have experienced a serious ME in a hospital, whereas 11 percent have announced having been prescribed the wrong medication (European Commission, 2006). In Sweden, over 3000 people die each year as a result of MEs and adverse events. In Canada (2004) 185,000 were associated with an adverse event, 70,000 were potentially preventable.

Many studies have found that poor medical care, or even if providers treat patients rudely, dissatisfies patients, discourages them from seeking care, and returning for services, and prompts them to switch physicians. Health-care staff members derive greater personal and professional satisfaction from their jobs when they can offer good-quality care and feel their work is valuable. Some studies argue that the most satisfying aspect of physicians’ jobs is helping people, and the community recognition they received for it.

Systematic methods of patient safety, quality assurance and patient satisfaction are still evolving, in both developed and developing countries. The medical and health-care sectors have to cope with environmental pressures, such as demographic changes and ageing of populations, as well as the emergence of new treatments and technologies, and increased insistence on greater medical and health care in order to remain competitive. This Special Issue reflects an effort to capture current developments in the healthcare quality and patient satisfaction field, and to provide a forum for cutting-edge contributions to the literature.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Best Practices in Clinical and Operational Processes

• Post-operative care and patient satisfaction after critical surgeries

• Patient Satisfaction: recent Indicator for the Quality of Primary Care

• Relationship of Patient Satisfaction with Care and Clinical Outcomes.

• Illness Behavior and Patent satisfaction

• Methods to reduce medical errors and increase patient satisfaction

• Measurement of patient safety and satisfaction

• Patient satisfaction and health-related quality of life

• Key factors affecting quality of life in patients with chronical illnesses

• The Care Act and Standards and Patient Satisfaction in Hospitals

• Self-efficacy and patient satisfaction

• Physician and patient satisfaction

Prof. Dr. Mosad Zineldin
Guest Editor

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