Status of Patient Centered Care in Tigrai Regional State: Patients Perspective

Abstract

Back ground- A lot has been done globally, continentally and at national level to improve health status of the community. Despite the increasing scope and sophistication of healthcare, the huge resources devoted to it and the focus on improvement; it is still failing at a fundamental level. Caring and compassion, the basics of care delivery, and the human aspects that define it seem to be under strain.

Objective-To assess the Status of patient centered care in Tigrai Regional state: Patients Perspective

Methodology-Cross-sectional study design was employed and the study participants were 1436 patients attending in the selected health facilities in Tigray health institutions. The study participants were selected proportionally from each health facility using systematic random sampling on discharge. Individualized Care Scale tool was used to assess patient’s perception and experience on patient centered care. Interviewer administered data collection technique was employed. Epi info 7 was used for data entry and analyzed by SPSS version 20 software. Tables, figures and text were used for data organization and presentation.

Results-The mean age of the study participants was 38.3 (+15.2). Majority (63.1%) of the participants were married by marital status and 37.4% were with no formal education. Similar proportion of males and females (53.4 versus 55.7) had good experience towards caring, respectful and companionate health care practice. Besides, about 70% of participants who were self employed had poor experience and 76.3% farmers had good experience concerning patient centered care.Males and females had similar level of poor level of perception (42.3 versus 45.3) towards caring, respectful and compassionate health care practice. Similarly, those with age less than or equal to 37.8 and greater than 37.8 had similar level of good practice (57.8 versus 53.7); on the other hand those who are divorced by marital status, 63.2%  and 36.8% had good and poor practice respectively.

Conclusion-In this study the perception of patients towards caring, respectful and compassionate health care practice was found to be good in 55% of respondents and poor in the rest 45% respondents. Similarly, patient experience towards CRC was assessed and found to be good experience and poor experience in 56% and 44% of the respondents respectively. Hence much should be done to improve the practice of CRC through policy & guideline development, continuous Training for all health professionals and Community awareness.

Keywords: Compassionate,Respectful,Care,Tigray,Ethiopia