Health staff perception regarding quality of delivered information to inpatients.

BACKGROUND Accreditation usually requires that healthcare staff assess the quality of care delivered to patients in their own hospitals. It is unknown whether this assessment depends on the workplace rather than on the professional category of health personnel. OBJECTIVE We aimed to identify major determinants of the perception of various categories of healthcare professionals concerning the quality of delivered information to inpatients in their ward, with a perspective to help the development of recommendations on how to compose self-assessment teams for the accreditation process. METHOD A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted in nine wards from five short-stay hospitals in Paris, France. Three hundred and fifteen healthcare professionals (physicians, nurses and nursing assistants) were included. The views of various categories of healthcare professionals regarding the compliance with a set of quality standards were compared by nonparametric statistical analyses. Determinants of the self-assessment of quality of care, including ward effect, were identified by fitting the data to a hierarchical model. RESULTS The participation rate was 86%, with 272 respondents (58 physicians, 149 nurses and 65 nursing assistants). Overall perceptions of various categories of healthcare professionals were not different. The final hierarchical model showed a strong ward effect (intracluster correlation coefficient=0.06, P<0.01) and a significant relationship between age of professionals and their opinion about quality of care. CONCLUSION We observed a ward cluster effect on healthcare staff perception of quality, but the category of healthcare professional was not a determinant. A satisfactory representativeness on age of professionals selected into the teams in charge of self-assessment during hospital accreditation is recommended.