Psychiatry Research EG

Background Patient satisfaction with mental health services is an important issue, which influences multiple areas, including treatment response, outcome and quality of life. In Egypt, assessment of service quality in mentally ill patients has been relatively limited, and no national statistical studies exist on the real quality of outpatient services. Objectives To assess patients’ satisfaction with different psychiatric diagnoses in outpatient psychiatric clinic; and to evaluate its association with treatment setting, patient sociodemographic and clinical variables. Methods A cross sectional study, based on semi-structured interview, was used to assess 206 mentally ill patients with different psychiatric diagnoses recruited from the Outpatient Clinic of the Psychiatric Institute, Ain Shams University Hospital, Egypt. The assessment tools included: SCID-CV, the CSQ-8 client satisfaction questionnaire, and twelve questions including treatment setting items. Results The global satisfaction rate was high (50% satisfied and 32.8% very satisfied). Reasons for greater satisfaction were careful listening of doctors to patient complaints, adequate information given by doctors, dealing of medical team, and satisfaction with duration of examination. Patient satisfaction was strongly and positively correlated with doctors’ hearing patient complaints, duration of waiting time, site of medical service, system of hospital follow-up, waiting areas and negatively correlated with disease relapses. While other clinical and demographic factors did not correlate with client satisfaction. However, in regression analyses, the duration of waiting in the clinic, and the number of disease relapses, were the most important determinants of service satisfaction. Conclusion Satisfaction of psychiatric outpatients is relatively high and significantly related to the patient’s waiting time and number of disease relapse. Keywords: Egyptian sample, mental health, outpatient clinic, satisfaction, service