Pre-Consultation waiting time in a Nigerian public eye facility - a source of patient dissatisfaction

Abstract

In order to determine subjective responses of ophthalmic patients to pre-consultation waiting time, a cross-sectional study was carried out with pretested questionnaires. Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 15.0 was used for descriptive analysis. In the research a total of 251 patients were analyzed comprising 139 males (55 percent) and 112 females (45 percent), in the ratio of 1: 0.8 respectively. Their ages ranges from 17 to 92 years with a mean of 37.2 years + 15.6 Satisfaction with overall quality of services was 80.1 percent; only 25.5 percent were satisfied with waiting time. Bivariate analysis (validated by multiple logistic regressions of confounding variables) of waiting time and overall satisfaction showed a result of X 2 =44.586 and p-value = 0.0001. It is thus concluded that Pre-consultation waiting time is a major source of patient dissatisfaction to our facility.