OTHR-04 PATIENT SATISIFACTION WITH NURSING CARE AMONG PEDIATRIC CANCER PATIENTS ATTENDING UGANDA CANCER INSTITUTE MULAGO KAMPALA UGANDA

To assess the level of patients’ satisfaction with nursing care among pediatric cancer patients attending Uganda Cancer Institute in order to improve the quality of oncology services provided by the nurses to the pediatric patients at UCI.

Patient satisfaction is significant and usually used as an indicator for measuring the degree of excellence in health care. Patient satisfaction is the patient’s perception of care received compared with the care expected. A survey carried out by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in 2020 showed that more than half of the patients who visit Ugandan hospitals have to wait for more than an hour before they can see a health worker only to be told there’s no medicine or equipment to assist in their diagnosis. A number of studies have been conducted, however, there was little information on patients’ satisfaction with nursing care among pediatric cancer patients attending Uganda Cancer Institute and this left grey area for the researcher to conduct the study in this health facility.

The study was done among sample size of fifty-six (56) respondents who were the caregivers of children between 0-17 years getting treatment at UCI. A cross sectional study design was used for this research, quantitative method of data collection using a questionnaire.

The study findings showed the respondents largely were satisfied with nursing care but problems of accessing clean water for drinking (52%), failure to give diagnostic talk (68%), no comfortable rooms for privacy (52%), nurse patient ratio at (63%) and nurses’ failure to give follow up calls (84%) were among the dissatisfactions.

The researcher concluded majority of respondents were satisfied with nursing care at UCI pediatrics nursing care. However, they expressed dissatisfactions in some crucial areas that need immediate attention of the hospital management.