Abstract

This study aims to examine the level of parental satisfaction, as expressed through the perceptions of parents regarding the quality of services at Taif Children’s Hospital in attempt to come up with better measures to improve the quality of services delivered to the patients, and to identify factors associated with this level of satisfaction. A well-developed validated and reliable questionnaire including six domains: “general satisfaction”, “facilities and amenities”, “staff attitude and behavior”, “communication and information sharing”, “timeliness and accessibility”, and “continuity of care” was used in this cross-sectional study on 4871 parents, over a 3-month period. The degree to which sociodemographic characteristics and parent’s satisfaction are associated was assessed using multivariate regression analysis. The results of this study showed that the level of parental satisfaction with all 17 items of the study questionnaire was high. The staff attitude and behavior domain received a mean of (3.89 out of 5) compared to (3.89) for general satisfaction. Timeliness and accessibility (3.87) was followed by communication and information sharing (3.81), and continuity of care (3.8). The facilities and amenities domain received the lowest rating (3.74). In terms of the factors associated with parents' satisfaction with the service quality, the current study showed that elderly age, single, divorce or widowed, lower educated parents without health literacy had lower levels of satisfaction than younger, married, more educated parents with health literacy, respectively. The findings of the study could serve as a reference point for assessing the quality of healthcare services in Saudi Arabia and provide a foundation for initiating quality assurance processes.