Family Satisfaction Survey in a Regional Hospital Closed System ICU

Background: Evaluating family satisfaction with a regional hospital 33-bed general intensive care unit (ICU), which is a closed system and allows full time intensivist to provide patients with an advanced quality of intensive care. Methods: Self-administrated questionnaires, consisting of 5-point Liker Scale items and open-ended questions, were given, within 24-48 hours of patient admission, to family members who were visiting patients admitted to the ICU in March, June, September and December 2006. Results: A total of 373 (91.27%) family members completed the questionnaire. The average overall satisfaction score was 4.42±0.61 against a score of 5.0 showing ”very satisfied”. Overall, 66.2% of families intended to choose the ICU again if necessary or recommend it to others. Through logistic regression analysis, there were four major factors affecting the overall satisfaction. These were service during the process of transfer to the ICU (OR=10.8), environmental sanitation standards (OR=6.0), the nurses' attitude to the families (OR=28.6) and intensivists' expert knowledge and skill (OR=21.6). The nurses' attitudes to the patients’ feelings and needs (OR=10.9) and service during the process of transfer to ICU (OR=8.0) were the two major factors affecting the tendency to reuse the ICU. Conclusion: This study revealed that the surveyed families were generally satisfied with the closed system ICU at this regional hospital. The factors that had a positive influence on family satisfaction were the transfer process to the ICU, environmental sanitation standards, the intensivists' expert knowledge and skill, and the nurses' attitude to the families.