Patients' perception of the ambulance services at Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia.

INTRODUCTION Little is known regarding public opinion of prehospital care in Malaysia. This study was conducted to find out the public's perception and expectations of the ambulance services in one of the university hospitals in Malaysia. METHODS A six-month prospective cross-sectional study to look at patients' perception of Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia's (HUSM) ambulance service was conducted from February 2006 to July 2006. Upon arrival at the hospital, patients or their relatives (who used our hospital's ambulances) were interviewed with a set of questions regarding their perception of the ambulance services and were asked to rate the perception on a Likert Scale from 1 to 10. A convenient sampling method was applied. RESULTS A total of 87 samples were obtained. Despite the many problems faced by the ambulance service in HUSM, the mean score for each of the questions on patient's perception ranged from 9.33 to 9.70 out of 10. The questions with the highest mean score, which were both 9.70 each, were related to staff attentiveness and staff gentleness. CONCLUSION Patients' perceptions can be very subjective, but until further similar studies could be carried out in other parts of Malaysia, this set of data merely represents a numerical measure of public perception of the ambulance services from HUSM.