Patient survey: ‘mostly happy’ with hospital

Patient satisfaction levels after treatment at the Midland Regional Hospital Mullingar were high during the last year, results from the National Inpatient Experience Survey have found.

The National Inpatient Experience Survey offers patients the opportunity to describe their experiences of public acute healthcare in Ireland.

The aim is to find out about patients’ experiences and to use their feedback to identify areas of good experience, and areas needing improvement.

This was the third year of the survey, and 283 patients from Midland Regional Hospital Mullingar (MRHM) took part.

The majority of participants from MRHM reported positive experiences in hospital – 83% of participants said they had ‘good’ or ‘very good’ overall experiences, compared with 84% nationally. The hospital received scores which were about the same as the national average across all stages of care.

Three areas of good experience were identified. These were areas that were related to participants’ overall experiences and where participants gave significantly above average ratings. For example, many patients said that they were always given enough privacy on a ward, and while discussing their condition or treatment. Most participants also reported that the toilets or bathrooms they used were ‘very clean’.

There were also two areas needing improvement: while the majority of patients said that all of the staff wore name badges, the hospital scored below the national average for this question. Many patients received written or printed information on what they should or should not do after leaving hospital, yet the rating for this question was also below the national average.

Some 638 people discharged from MRHM during the month of May 2019 were invited to participate in the survey, and 283 people completed it – a response rate of 45%. Fifty one per cent of participants were male and 49% were female; 256 respondents (91%) said that their stay in hospital was due to an emergency.

Ratings of ‘examination, diagnosis and treatment’ were similar to the national average and to last year’s survey. Most patients said that they were always given enough privacy when being examined or treated. The lowest scoring question for this stage related to whether patients were told how they could expect to feel after an operation or procedure.

Most participants said they were always treated with respect and dignity. On the other hand, a number of patients said that there were insufficient opportunities for their families to talk to a doctor.

Respondents were asked to rate their overall hospital experience on a scale from 0 to 10, 10 the most positive experience, and 0 the most negative experience. Fifty eight per cent of participants from MRHM rated their care as very good, slightly above the national figure of 56%.

The last three questions of the survey asked patients to provide additional information, in their own words, on their experiences in hospital, which allowed them to talk about various things (good or bad) that could not be captured by the structured questions.

In total, 417 comments were received from patients of MRHM in response to the free-text questions in the 2019 survey.

While there was much praise for the hospital staff, with 128 comments describing good experiences, and 42 responses stating that there was room for improvement.