Patients Rate U Hospital

Pasty food, "banging pails, the rattle of carts, noisy visitors and the midnight shot or pill. Patients are still listing traditional grievances among the chief irritants of hospital confinement, according to a new survey at the U-M Hospital. But, on the plus side, doctors and nurses continue tö rate surprisingly high with the people they take care of, despite much recent criticism of the health care establishment, according to the hospital. This highly positive attitude toward medical and nursing care was one unexpected finding of a patiënt attitude survey program instituted at the U-M Hospital. Until the quarterly poll was initiated at the 1,000-bed hospital, administrators, doctors and i nurses could only guess at how patients really feit about the care they were getting, food, their hospital ' vironment, their room or ward, financial matters and other aspects of being sick and under treatment in a major health „ care institution. The survey questionnaire and polling technique were put together based on the experiences of institutions around this country and England, and with assistance from survey expert Prof. Charles F. Cannell of the U-M Institute for Social Research, according to Dr. James A. McLean of the Hospital's Patiënt Care Committee. The first two surveys - summer and fall of 1974 - disclosed some surprising facts, Dr. McLean noted. Contrary to some Hospital apprehensions, patients said they were generally more satisfied with the quality of their care and with the attitude of doctors and nursès than was thought to be the case. For example, when asked to rate the attitude of nurses at University Hospital as "very courteous," "somewhat courteous," "somewhat discourteous," or "very discourteous," 90 per cent of the patients gave nurses the top "very courteous" rating. A similarly high proportion gave the hospital doctor top marks, according to the hospital. Medical and nursing students also met with approval. Three-quarters of the patients polled feit that the students contributed to their care rather than detracting or making no difference. This finding is significant, Dr. McLean said, since University. Hospital is a teaching institution with scores of medical and nursing students on the floors each day to gain clinical experience. Other aspects of hospitalization, predictably, met with less enthusiasm. Hospital food, like institutional food everywhere, was found somewhat wanting. Even so, a majority of patients reported that the meals were on time, reasonably hot, and were either good or satisfactory, and that there always was enough to eat. Patiënte also looked less favorably on the activity and noise level of the floors and the sometimes lengthy waits at laboratories or clinical testing units. The patiënt attitude survey was initiated by the hospital's Public Information Office and the Patiënt Care Committee, and consists of 26 questions which seek 56 responses to mostly multiple choice queries. i The questionnaires are distributed by hospital volunteers to nearly all generalcare adu'.t patients in the Hospital on a given day and the results are coded for data processing, according to Robert Lindy, supervisor of the survey for the Information Office. The patients who completed and returned the questionnaires were about evenly divided between men and women. More than three-quarters had previously been patients in other hospitals and they represented almost all patiënt areas in Uriiversity Hospital, Lindy said. Hospital officials see use for the information gathered not only for making immediate changes as necessary, but also for long range planning, to incorpórate the patient's viewpoint as heálth care facilities change and develop.