Patient experience with nursing care and patient satisfaction with overall hospital services

Objective: To determine how patient experience with nursing care influence
patient satisfaction with overall hospital services. Design: This was a
cross-sectional study. Setting: Inpatients were consecutively recruited at
the national hospital (with 2000 beds) in Shanghai, China. Participants:
The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) hospitalized for 2 days or
more; (2) able to read and understand Chinese; and (3) aged 18 years old
or above. Patients with mental health problems were excluded. 756 patient
surveys distributed among 36 wards were analyzed. The mean age of
participants in the study was 57.7 (SD=14.5) and ranged from 18-80 years.
Most participants were male (61.5%) and ever married (94.6%). Primary and
secondary outcome measures: Patient experience with nursing care,
meaning the sum of all interactions between patients and nurses, was
measured using the self-designed questionnaire, which was developed by
patient interviews, literature analysis and expert consultation. The
overall patient satisfaction question was measured with a ten-point
response option ranging from 1-10. Results: A linear relationship between
the patient experience with nursing care and overall patient satisfaction
was observed. The patient experience with nursing care was significantly
associated with overall satisfaction in the crude model and in the
adjusted models. Even after adjusting for 6 sociodemographic and 3
disease-related factors, the patient experience with nursing care
explained 34.9% of the variation in overall patient satisfaction.
Conclusions: This study showed that patient experience with nursing care
was an important predictor for overall patient satisfaction.