Correlation between Employees' Satisfaction Working at Hospitals and Maternal Satisfaction with Service Quality and Recovery Process of Children

Introduction and purpose: Hospitals are seeking for maximum patient satisfaction, especially in the Pediatric Wards. This study investigated whether employees’ satisfaction correlated with maternal satisfaction, quality of services, and recovery process of children in a Pediatric Ward of a hospital.   Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study included 16 employees and 30 mothers of hospitalized children in the Pediatric Ward of a hospital located in a deprived area in Iran with no sampling. The data were collected using two researcher-made questionnaires (i.e., employees’ and mothers’ questionnaires) with reliability values of  0.712 and 0.926, respectively, using Cronbach’s alpha. Moreover, the reliability of the questionnaires was confirmed by a group of professors who were experts in the health sciences. The data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 19) through the Chi-square and Fischer’s exact tests. Results: The results of this study showed that maternal satisfaction correlated significantly with imaging services (P=0.004), medical services (P=0.003), clinical staff views about the process of recovery (P=0.005), and the reception services as well as employees’ satisfaction (P=0.009). However, maternal satisfaction had no correlation with education (P=0.891), type of insurance (P=0.817), laboratory services (P=0.164), and patient services (P=0.064). Furthermore, employees’ satisfaction correlated significantly with the type of occupation (P=0.005), job benefits (P=0.015), and nutrition (P=0.029). Additionally, there was not a relationship between employees’ satisfaction and nurse supervisors or department heads’ attention (P=0.897).  Conclusion: According to the results of this study, mothers had a moderate level of satisfaction with the services provided by physicians, nurses, and welfare services. It should be noted that more attention to the childcare by the clinical staff led to a higher level of maternal satisfaction. It is worth mentioning that timely and increased payment of salaries, as well as job benefits, can be effective in increasing staffs’ satisfaction and improving their performance.