PURPOSE: this study was to investigate the perception gap on nursing service between consumers and providers.
METHOD
the questionnaire founded on the SERVQUAL was developed and distributed to 300 patients and 210 nurses at the three subjected general hospitals in three provincial city, Korea during February to March, 2001. For data analysis, Cronbachs' Alpha, frequency, t-test, and paired t-test were used.
RESULT
1. In the gap analysis on the 20 properties constituting nursing service, providers almost all perceived higher than consumer in quality. Among them, the number of properties being statistically significant was 7 in the expectation, 18 in the important and 7 in the performance. 2. In the comparison analysis of the perception gap on the expectation-performance and the important-performance, it turned out that the subjected hospitals had to improve their equipment and facilities immediately. It was suggested a good strategy to strengthen the responsiveness factor and the assurance factor of nursing service.
CONCLUSION
it could be concluded that nurses have to recognize the blind spot of their perception and endeavor to take away the perception gap between consumers and providers.
This study was performed to give direction to quality improvement strategies of nursing services by comparing the differences in quality perceptions and satisfaction for nursing services between patients and nurses in small-medium sized general hospitals with 200 beds.
The subjects, who were 150 inpatients and 162 nurses of 4 general hospitals in a community, answered a self-report questionnaire with a SERVQUAL scale.
There were differences between patients' and nurses' expectations and perceptions of nursing service and satisfaction. In the service expectation, the highest factor was ‘the responsiveness’, and in the perceived performance, the highest was the ‘assurance’. In addition, overall patients' perceptions on nursing services showed higher than nurses'. There were positive correlations among the expectations and perceptions on nursing service, and satisfaction. The correlation between perception and satisfaction was higher than the correlation between expectations and satisfaction.
To improve the nursing service quality at small-medium hospitals, strengthening the ‘assurance’ factor and improving the nursing service support system is needed. Also, this study on nurses' perceived nursing service at small-medium sized hospitals should be duplicated.