Elsevier

Annals of Medicine and Surgery

Volume 58, October 2020, Pages 14-19
Annals of Medicine and Surgery

Cross-sectional Study
Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on patient satisfaction and surgical outcomes: A retrospective and cross sectional study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2020.08.020Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected health care systems across developing and developed countries.

  • This study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patient satisfaction and surgical outcomes.

  • Overall, the rate of adverse surgical outcomes was low and we were able to achieve sustained levels of positive patients' satisfaction rates.

  • We believe it may be safe to perform selective surgical procedures after taking stringent precautionary measures.

Abstract

Objective

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patient satisfaction and surgical outcomes at King Khalid University Hospital in Saudi Arabia.

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected health care systems across developing and developed countries. Therefore, it is important to understand its impact on various parameters of patient care as regards revised infrastructure and policies in hospitals during the pandemic.

Method

It is a retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted from 13-3–2020 to 26-4-2020 at King Khalid University Hospital in Saudi Arabia. Patient satisfaction and surgical outcomes were the main outcome measures.

Results

331 participants were included in the study (median age: 53 years; 70% female), and 223 completed the patient's satisfaction survey. 260 of the surgeries were non-oncolog cases (78.6%) compared to 71 oncology cases (21.4%). With respect to the surgical outcomes, 12% of the patients required admission to the ICU, and 10.9% developed postoperative complications, most of which were infectious complications. Only 1.8% (6 patients) were re-admitted to the hospital. Three patients died within 30 days post-op (0.9%), all had emergency surgery. Regarding patient satisfaction, 77.6% and 93% of the patients reported that nurses and doctors, respectively, treated them with courtesy and respect, listened to them carefully, and provided clear explanations to them. 90.3% were satisfied with the hospital sanitary measures. 64.1% stated that they got written instructions at the time of discharge.

Conclusion

The satisfaction level of patients was high for all the studied domains, and there were a small number of complications with overall good surgical outcomes. That indicates that all the actions and policies that were implemented during the pandemic were proven beneficial for the patients. It is recommended to continue those measures until the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

Keywords

COVID-19
Patient's satisfaction
Saudi Arabia
Surgeries

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