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Research Article | DOI: https://doi.org/10.31579/2690-1919/304
General Hospital of Thoracic Diseases SOTIRIA, Athens, Greece.
*Corresponding Author: Paraskevi Theofilou. General Hospital of Thoracic Diseases SOTIRIA, Athens, Greece.
Citation: Paraskevi Theofilou (2023) Evaluation of Quality Level in Health Sector: Which is the Relation to Demographic and Work Factors in Health Professionals?, J Clinical Research and Reports, 13(2); DOI:10.31579/2690-1919/304
Copyright: © 2023 Paraskevi Theofilou. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received: 08 February 2023 | Accepted: 16 February 2023 | Published: 27 February 2023
Keywords: quality; health sector; health professionals; demographic and work factors
The aim of the present study is to investigate the quality level in health sector as well as the relation to demographic and work factors in health professionals. The research involved 99 people (11 men and 88 women) with an average age of 44.00±7.55 years of life and with a seniority of 19.29±9.01 years. The SERVQUAL scale was used. The results showed no statistically significant associations of satisfaction and efficiency among health professionals with demographic and work factors (p>0.05). More studies must be conducted in the context of investigation of the above variables.
The structural blocks of a health service delivery system are the basics data and features used to implement any evaluation program of the services offered by it. An important tool for measuring the quality of health services are criteria. By using the criteria, the desired level of service quality is determined and standards are defined, against which the work provided is compared and evaluated. The approach of Donabedian [1], introduces the classification of criteria into three groups.
Especially for the provision of services in the Hospital sector the use of the criteria aims to assess the quality associated [2] with:
Measuring Job Satisfaction
Two strong imperatives for health care managers are to reduce cost of services provided and attraction and retention in particular committed and capable of caring for and supporting sick workers. From the one side, many of the factors that help an organization to recruit, satisfaction, and retention of the best professionals can be considered as incompatible with cost containment. Among these factors are superior pay and benefits, a supportive work environment, and the programs for the development and empowerment of employees, which may they are time-consuming, difficult to implement, or costly [3].
On the other hand, programs that improve the quality of working life of employees and increase their engagement when they connect with the right ones incentive mechanisms and structural designs, can increase the incentives, to reduce organizational turbulence, as well as to improve it economic [4].
Key factors shaping the job satisfaction of employees in health services are the financial rewards, the work environment, the feeling of its autonomy and security, respect, recognition, educational opportunities, etc. The job satisfaction is measured with special questionnaires, which include questions and weighted scales [5].
The aim of the present study is to investigate the quality level in health sector as well as the relation to demographic and work factors in health professionals.
This is a quantitative cross-sectional study including the dependent variable of quality and the evaluation from health professionals. The independent factors are the sociodemographic as well as the work variables.
The research involved 99 people (11 men and 88 women) with an average age of 44.00±7.55 years of life and with a seniority of 19.29±9.01 years. The majority of them were married (68.7%), 27.3% were single while 3.0% were divorced. The inclusion criteria of the sample were >18 years old, working at least 1 year in public hospitals, speaking the Greek language and having a good perceived ability.
The SERVQUAL scale has been used in numerous studies of the service sector health care but reflecting the users' point of view services for their quality [6-10]. The literature search to explore the views of professionals’ health for internal quality issues has not identified similar studies. This finding strengthens the opinion that the internal quality of services has not been sufficiently studied and is one new and particularly interesting research field (11). Based on the logic that the techniques and methods used for them external customers can also be applied to internal customers [12,13] several researchers focused efforts them in the modification of SERVQUAL to measure the internal quality at services [14,15]. According to the findings of Kang et al. [16] and Reynoso and Moore [17], the SERVQUAL scale can used to investigate internal quality in services.
In the present research, this scale was used and with appropriate vocabulary modifications of the Quality-of-Service Questionnaire [18] were created 22 variables presented above for the evaluation of the internal quality by the managers of the clinical departments on a 7-point Likert scale (I strongly disagree – I strongly agree).
All the participants were informed about the aim of the study as well as the right to discontinue their participation at any moment. The statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS statistical package.
The research involved 99 people (11 men and 88 women) with an average age of 44.00±7.55 years of life and with a seniority of 19.29±9.01 years. The majority of them were married (68.7%), 27.3% were single while 3.0% were divorced. Regarding their educational level, 19 people had two years of study while 48 had a degree from university/technological education (higher education). Thirty-two individuals held master's/doctorate degrees. Regarding the position they held, 62 people were nursing staff, 24 people belonged to the medical staff, 11 people were midwives and only 2 people had a position of responsibility (supervisors).
Table 1: Demographic and work characteristics of the participant
Below, the results of the study are analyzed.
Table 2: Descriptive data of questionnaire dimensions
In the table above, the descriptive elements of the five dimensions of the questionnaire are presented. In particular, the average of tangibles reached 15.69, reliability reached 19.06, responsiveness reached 5.38, assurance reached 8.60 and the dimension of empathy reached 17.65.
In table 3, the descriptive data of all the questionnaire items are presented.
Table 3: Descriptive data of all questionnaire items
In addition, it should be emphasized that the tool used in this research showed very good reliability, demonstrating a Cronbach a of 0.805. In table 4, the degree of reliability in all dimensions is presented.
Table 4: Instrument reliability
Regarding sample normality, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was performed. The results presented in the table below showed that in the dimensions of tangible elements and empathy, respectively, as well as in the total score of the questionnaire, their values were normal (p>0.05) in contrast to the values of the remaining dimensions that were not normal ( p<0>
Table 5: Sample normality
However, based on the central limit theorem, according to which a sample of more than 30 individuals is large, parametric tests were performed as part of the statistical analysis.
Table 6: Correlation of age to satisfaction and efficiency
Tables 6 and 7 show the correlations of seniority and age with satisfaction and efficiency. Based on the results, there were no statistically significant correlations between the aforementioned variables (p>0.05).
Table 8: Differences between the two genders regarding satisfaction and efficiency
Based on the results of the table above, there were no statistically significant differences between the two genders in terms of satisfaction and efficiency (p>0.05).
Table 9: Differences between marital status regarding satisfaction and efficiency
Based on the results of table 9, there were also no statistically significant differences between marital status in terms of satisfaction and efficiency (p>0.05).
Table 10: Differences between position regarding satisfaction and efficiency
Based on the results of table 10, there were also no statistically significant differences between the position in terms of satisfaction and efficiency (p>0.05).
Table 11: Differences between educational level regarding satisfaction and efficiency
Based on the results of table 11, no statistically significant differences were noted between the educational level in terms of satisfaction and efficiency (p>0.05).
The aim of the present study is to investigate the quality level in health sector as well as the relation to demographic and work factors in health professionals. The findings indicate that there is no relation of demographic and work factors in health professionals to satisfaction and efficiency of the health sector. More relevant research results have shown that this association is strong.
Specifically, in a study of Partheniadis et al. [19] regarding the role of demographic features in patients’ satisfaction from healthcare, specific socio-demographic factors such as patients ‘age, occupation and marital status seem to influence patients’ level of satisfaction. In a study of Theofilou [20], concerning the investigation of outpatient satisfaction in a General Hospital as well as the effect of socio-demographic factors, there is a statistically significant correlation between socio-demographic variables (age, insurance and nationality) and patient satisfaction level [20,21].
Regarding the limitations of the present research, it is noted that the results obtained from the said study can be further investigated in samples from other hospital contexts, private or even public, giving the possibility to control the variables under study, to compare the results, so that more general conclusions can be drawn. However, it should be noted that this study was conducted in only one hospital and therefore, because the sample is small, the results cannot be generalized
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