RESUMEN
Patient satisfaction is an important tool that measure performance of health care providers. To assess patient satisfaction towards Primary Care in Sharkia Governorate in 2009, and to detect causes of patient dissatisfaction. This study was carried out on 893 patients from 18 Primary Health Care Facilities in Sharkia. Data were collected through interview sheet including seven domains of patient satisfaction: reception service, doctors' and nurses' performance, accessibility in time and place, health environment and patients' rights. Responses were put in Likert Scale from excellent to poor, then satisfaction level was classified into: unsatisfied, partially satisfied and strongly satisfied. Pareto analysis for causes of dissatisfaction was done. The majority of patients were satisfied with accessibility of facilities in time 96.98% and place [98.54%], short waiting time [97.98%]. 73.46% of patients were satisfied with doctors' performance and 60.36% with nurses' performance. 33.26% of patients reported drugs unavailability, 25.87% were dissatisfied with the inadequacy of laboratory capabilities. Pareto analysis revealed that causes of dissatisfaction were deficiency in: information given to patients, bio-psychosocial approach, co-ordination between drugs, shared management, examination, follow-up, health education, referral, drugs, cleanliness, nurses' skills, and investigations. Most of patients were satisfied with accessibility of PHC facilities in time and place, short waiting time, cost of tickets, preventive services and staff performance. Most of patient dissatisfaction [80%] resulted from only 8 of studied causes regarding doctors' performance and only 7 of studied causes of nurses' performance, and health care environment