Determining patients' satisfaction level with hospital emergency rooms in Iran: a meta-analysis.

Emergency department is one of the important parts of hospitals, and patients' satisfaction with this department significantly affects their overall satisfaction with the hospital. Therefore, evaluating patients' satisfaction level with the emergency part has been taken into account in different studies. The purpose of this study was to systematically review all available primary studies and their results and to evaluate patients' satisfaction level with emergency rooms of hospitals. In this study, previous documents were reviewed; to do this, national and international databases were searched electronically and related articles were extracted. Reference list of the published studies were also reviewed to increase sensitivity and to select a greater number of articles. Reviewing and studying titles and texts of the articles, repeated and unrelated cases were excluded. The remaining articles were entered into stat aver., 11 for meta-analysis. After meta-analysis, 24 articles were selected. The lowest and highest satisfaction level was 24 and 98.4% respectively. Meta-analysis results of studies showed that general evaluation of patients' satisfaction level with emergency rooms of hospitals was 68.9% in Iran. This meta-analysis revealed that patients' satisfaction level with performance and with the way services were presented in emergency rooms of hospitals was desirable in Iran. Concerning multifactorial nature of patients' satisfaction, it is necessary to take this matter into regular and routine consideration.