Importance of the Problem
The importance of the problem studied is because increasing patient satisfaction with medical care through provider training is one of the top priorities facing healthcare. In the context of working out a patient-oriented model of medical care, the opinions of patients can serve as a guide in improving the healthcare system (Legler et al., 2018). The results of the study of patient satisfaction with the medical services provided accurately reflect the positive and negative trends in the medical organization. They allow us to identify factors that negatively affect patient satisfaction with medical care and to take corrective measures promptly through the appointment of provider training.
Statistics
A health outcome, which directly depends on the level of expectations of patients and the quality of providers’ training, consists of many factors, most of which are subjective. Since this circumstance makes it difficult to assess the degree of satisfaction of the population with medical care, the most informative method of studying patients’ opinions on the work of the healthcare system is recognized as conducting sociological surveys regarding a health outcome and the level of providers’ training (Ngantcha et al., 2021). Satisfaction with medical care allows one to form a strategy for the development of a medical institution.
When using information about patient satisfaction, patient compliance increases, continuity of treatment is realized, and the health indicators of the population improve. In addition, patients have a desire to seek help again from the medical organization in which the patient-oriented approach is implemented, as well as to advise it to their friends and relatives, which favorably affects the financial condition of this medical organization and the cost associated with the health outcome (Miller & Jones, 2022). It is worth noting that the development of this direction is impossible without an appropriate level of quality of provider training.
A Research Gap
A gap that this research is going to fill is associated with some patient satisfaction and provider training areas yet to be studied. This is because having achieved significant success in overcoming the crisis phenomena that have arisen in all spheres of society as a result of large-scale socio-economic changes and political transformations, the healthcare system continues to be dynamically reformed (Smith et al., 2018). Therefore, further research will be based on changes in patient satisfaction criteria and the level and specifics of the provider training procedure in recent times.
Purpose Statement
This health services research paper is dedicated to establishing the social orientation of the healthcare system in matters of patient satisfaction and provider training. The objective of the study is to determine the goal of further reform, ultimately aimed at maximizing the satisfaction of the population’s requests for medical care (Banerjee et al., 2020). In this regard, it seems necessary in this paper to focus on the characteristics of the definition of satisfaction with medical care, and the features of provider training that contribute to its achievement.
Method
Participants Characteristics
Participants’ characteristics There will be two main types of medical and preventive institutions: outpatient and inpatient. Outpatient institutions participating in the study will include polyclinics and consultations. Ambulance stations will be excluded from the study. Hospitals and clinics will be considered as participants in the inpatient type of institutions in this study, and maternity hospitals and hospices will not be included (Hagiwara et al., 2019). Such a choice of medical institutions as participants is caused by the similar specifics of public services.
State, City, Population Served & Types of Hospitals
The southern states of the USA will be selected for the study, in particular, the major capital cities of these states. This is because these states had the lowest patient satisfaction and the least wide choice of training programs for providers (Trant et al., 2019). The population served will be adult US citizens applying to medical institutions. Minors and incapacitated citizens are excluded from the population under study. The types of hospitals selected for the study are both public and private clinics. Moreover, the stratified random sampling method was employed in the research. The method was chosen because it allows the results to be comparable with a general population and does not require focusing on representing different groups within a single sample (Islam et al., 2018). Furthermore, stratification was applied to provide more information related to a subgroup of patients (Ngiam & Khor, 2019). The stratified approach ensured that the sample included patients from all the chosen medical institutions.
Measures
To conduct a comparative analysis of the main tools for the study of satisfaction with the quality of medical care, as well as an assessment of the quality of provider training, a search was conducted for relevant studies published over the past five years. The main, independent variable was selected patient satisfaction with the quality of medical care in four gradations. Among them were gradations more satisfied than dissatisfied, satisfied, more dissatisfied than satisfied, and dissatisfied (Wang et al., 2018). Dependent variables such as care and attention from doctors and nurses, the level of knowledge of doctors, and the level of knowledge of nurses were studied and evaluated. Since these factors are developed as a result of provider training, the relationship between patient satisfaction indicators and various types of professional development that medical staff have undergone has been measured. Next, operationalization was conducted, translating abstract ideas into measurable components (Greenstein, 2006). The experience of the patients was translated into ordinal measurements.
Operational Definition of the Term Provider Training
The operational definition of the term provider training has the meaning of an educational event held both online and offline to improve the professional qualifications of a medical specialist. For example, it can be a training that allows staff to improve communication with patients and among themselves, which leads to a positive atmosphere in the team (Gao et al., 2022). It can also be various trainings aimed at improving the level of practical competencies, such as carrying out various manipulations with the patient.
Operational Definition of the Term Patient Satisfaction
The operational definition of the term patient satisfaction has the meaning of internal feelings and feelings of patients from the experience of interacting with a medical center. This is one of the objective and measurable indicators of the quality of medical care (North et al., 2020). This is the patient’s state of pleasure when the result obtained either coincides with the expectation or exceeds it. Satisfaction with medical care is the result of the ratio of expectations and actual received medical services, such as patient satisfaction with medical care depending on several subjective feelings and objective factors.
Research Design
The collection of statistical material was carried out using a questionnaire among a quota sample. It took into account and reflected the structure of the general population when contacting a doctor or discharging patients according to the questionnaire of the first level. When constructing the quota sample, some parameters of the general population of nurses and patients were taken into account (Mazziotti & Rutigliano, 2021). The number of treated patients in the day hospital and round-the-clock hospital, the number of attached patients for outpatient care, and the gender and age structure of attached and treated patients were noted. In addition, the number and quality of training programs completed by nurses were noted. Two methods of analysis were used to derive the result. While descriptive statistics are valuable for investigating typical values and the range of values for each variable in a data set, inferential statistics examine group differences and the connections between variables.
Results
Descriptive Analysis
The analysis of the results of the survey of patients in large cities of the southern states of the USA which is presented in Table 1 showed that patients of day and night hospitals note a high level of satisfaction with medical care, an average level of satisfaction was recorded among the patients of the polyclinic. At the same time, the highest level of satisfaction was noted in the day hospital – 91.2% of satisfied patients, 77.6% of patients were satisfied with medical care in the round-the-clock hospital, only 58.8% of patients were satisfied when seeking medical help from non-recently trained providers (Haverfield et al., 2020). The resulting satisfaction structure confirmed that the quality of medicine increases proportionally to provider training.
Table 1. Summary Statistics of Patient Satisfaction
Description of Key Summary Statistics
Key summary statistics indicate that patients who have applied for medical care show a high level of satisfaction with the work of doctors and the comfort of interaction with nurses. The average level of satisfaction patients expressed about medical healthcare providers who do not undergo regular training (Wang et al., 2018). Patient satisfaction with such specialists had the lowest level. At the same time, the average level of satisfaction was expressed by patients about providers who underwent training at least once a year.
Inferential Analysis
Patient satisfaction is higher than the average rate of satisfaction with the provision of medical care in the polyclinic by 5.4%, in the hospital – by 2.1%, and in the day hospital – by 5.0% (Gao et al., 2022). Patients are more satisfied with the medical care provided in the day hospital and the hospital of round–the–clock stay, to a lesser extent with the medical care provided in the polyclinic, which corresponds to the structure of satisfaction with medical care. The highest patient satisfaction is noted when evaluating the work of providers who have been regularly trained, which indicates a patient-oriented approach in the organization of medical care.
Description of Key Inferential Statistics Findings
Patients note the least satisfaction when evaluating work with providers who have not been trained regularly. This circumstance requires optimization of the work of healthcare providers’ education. The average level of patient satisfaction after admission, medical services such as diagnostic studies, and medical care of specialist doctors indicates some problems (Legler et al., 2018). They exist in the organization of the medical and diagnostic process in connection with the creation of conditions for regular training for healthcare providers. Conducting an internal audit in a medical organization to identify negative factors affecting the realization of patients’ expectations when receiving medical services will increase satisfaction with medical care with the help of regular provider training.
As can be seen from Chart 1, the main difficulties that providers had to face were the insufficient level of practical skills (70%), insufficient theoretical knowledge (63%), and 37% noted difficulties in communicating with colleagues. When interacting with these nurses, patients had the lowest degree of satisfaction (Ngantcha et al., 2021). The nurses’ professional growth was facilitated by the help of more experienced colleagues (72.3%), the passage of advanced training courses in specially designated institutions (36.8%), participation in medical conferences (19.2%), and self-education (15.7%). When interacting with providers who underwent planned and systematic training to improve professional skills, patient satisfaction was the highest.
Discussion
Recapping Salient Findings
The results of the previous search indicate that one of the principles of general medical practice is the provision of qualified primary health care to each family and the population as a whole. The need for provider training is largely due to the regular development of new methods of diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and the creation of new clinical guidelines and protocols based on evidence-based medicine that need to be applied in practice (Smith et al., 2018). However, this paper shows that provider training has a direct relationship with patient satisfaction, highlighting an advantage rarely considered in the works of other authors.
Study Implications
Study implications are related to the improvement of healthcare services policy towards a patient-centered approach or practice of continuing medical education. There are quite a lot of factors affecting patient satisfaction with medical care, and authors in different countries and regions tend to evaluate their weight and significance differently (Trant et al., 2019). However, this study proved the importance of the provider’s regular training factor. Study implications are the use of paper as a guide to increasing patient satisfaction in medical approval when such a need arises.
Limitations
This study has subject-semantic limitations related to the features of the subject of study – patient satisfaction – and the subjective difficulty of its assessment. The studied problem of factors affecting patient satisfaction was narrowed down to the establishment of provider training as the subject of the study while giving weight to only one factor and ignoring the totality of other influencing components (North et al., 2020). In addition, this paper has quantitative limitations, because the study participants were not all types of medical institutions and only individual states. The study also had moral and cultural limitations related to the views of the surveyed providers about their education.
Strengths
The strength of this paper is its compliance with the general principles of reliable research. For example, this is subjectivity, that is, the relationship with the same scientific and subject area: the specific problem of the relationship between patient satisfaction and provider training is considered in detail. Moreover, the strength of the study is its interpretability: it implies that all conclusions have been obtained, verified, and described in the study (Banerjee et al., 2020). Their submission is open and allows one to use the established data in the future.
Areas for Further Exploration
Research areas that need further exploration are also related to the study of the relationship between patient satisfaction and provider training in other states. It also seems rational to consider in more detail the provider training factor in combination with other factors that may affect patient satisfaction (Haverfield et al., 2020). In general, the area of further research may also involve a comparative analysis of the dependence of provider training and patient satisfaction in different states in the United States and conclusions regarding the principle of medical education in the country.
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