Patient satisfaction in the light of healthcare resources in hospitals

Background
Currently, the quality of medical services is one of the key elements of the healthcare system. A dynamically changing situation on the market of medical services, the development of medical technologies, the growing awareness of patients, and the demographics of aging societies trigger patient surveys and the use of their results to change the effectiveness of medical facilities.

Objectives
The study aimed to verify the correlation between staffing resources and the number of hospital beds (number of medical staff, including doctors, nurses, and midwives, as well as the number of beds per population of 10,000) and patient satisfaction with hospital care. The hypothesis was tested to determine whether structural indicators (number of beds, staff) directly influence patients’ assessment of care quality.

Material and methods
The study was conducted in March 2022. The sample included 801 individuals. The results were compared with available data on healthcare resources in Poland.

Results
The correlations are very weak and mostly insignificant. Only in the case of nurses, the correlation (r = 0.067) is close to significance at a level of 0.05, which may suggest a minimal positive influence of the number of nurses on the frequency of informing patients about procedures.

Conclusions
Structural indicators do not have a direct impact on patients’ evaluation of care quality. Patients’ assessments are most likely influenced by factors not included in this analysis, such as the quality of relationships with staff.