Measuring patient satisfaction as an outcome of nursing care at a teaching hospital of southern Taiwan

Patient satisfaction has become an important indicator to measure the quality of care. Nursing has long used outcome measures to evaluate health care. The study assessed the patient satisfaction of patients from medical and surgical units at a teaching hospital of southern Taiwan. Of the 806 near-discharge patients from medical or surgical units approached to participate in the study, a total of 477 patients returned questionnaires for a response rate of 59%. The total mean score for all the patients' satisfaction score was 4.28 (SD = 0.53). In general it reflected that the patients were satisfied. There was no significant difference between the patient demographic variables, primary nurse's age, marriage, and total working experience on any of the subscales. Results of this study provided evidence that primary nurse's unit working experience can influence patient satisfaction (P value <.05).