Patient Waiting Time in GOPD and SOPD at Nadi Hospital 2012

ABSTRACT

Patient waiting time is a real problem in Fiji and unfortunately Nadi Sub-divisional hospital is no exception. The objective of this study was to determine patient waiting time in the GOPD and SOPD clinic in the Nadi Sub-divisional Hospital, additionally to gauge patient satisfaction. Time logs were given to patients in order to log the time as the patient went through the diffrent management and investigation. Secondly a questionnaire was given to every 20th patient to measure their satisfaction with the services they received in GOPD and SOPD. The results showed that it took 2 hours and 57 minutes on average for a patient to be attended by a doctor in the GOPD clinic and 2 hours and 7 minutes in the SOPD clinic. 50% of all patients sampled believed that there should be more doctors and 36% complained of the shortage of drugs at the pharmacy. Any improvement to the quality of health care delivery in the Nadi Sub-Divisional hospital needs to include an increase in doctors as well as addressing how to prevent common drug shortages in the pharmacy department.