Introduction

Improving patient care has become a priority for all health care providers with the overall objective of achieving a high degree of patient satisfaction. Greater awareness among the public, increasing demand for better care, keener competition, more health care regulation, the rise in medical malpractice litigation, and concern about poor outcomes are factors that contribute to this change.

The quality of patient care is essentially determined by the quality of infrastructure, quality of training, competence of personnel and efficiency of operational systems. The fundamental requirement is the adoption of a system that is ‘patient orientated’. Existing problems in health care relate to both medical and non-medical factors and a comprehensive system that improves both aspects must be implemented. Health care systems in developing countries face an even greater challenge since quality and cost recovery must be balanced with equal opportunities in patient care.

The medical aspects of patient care are much better understood by most health care providers. This is dependent on the quality of medical and technical expertise, and the equipment and quality assurance systems in practice. The following factors contribute to the improvement of patient care.

Medical Aspects

Trained Personnel: A well-trained ‘Eye Care Team’ is critical to providing high quality care with desirable outcomes. Lack of adequate personnel and lack of adequate training facilities for the available personnel are major problems. The temptation to recruit untrained or poorly trained people should be resisted. The number of training programmes must be increased, and the existing programmes must be improved. Making a uniform basic curriculum available for all training institutions/programmes should help bring about standardisation.

Use of Proper Instruments: Good quality instruments are now available at lower costs. With the development of proper inventory control systems for a given operation, the costs can be lowered.

Use of Appropriate Medications: Access to low cost medicines is an absolute necessity for appropriate care.

Equipment: All the necessary equipment must be in place and properly maintained. This is vital to the performance of the medical system and contributes significantly to better results. Eye-care equipment of acceptable standards is now available at reasonable prices, and this must be accompanied by appropriate maintenance systems.

Improvement of patient care is a dynamic process and should be uppermost in the minds of medical care personnel. Development and sustenance of a patient-sensitive system is most critical to achieving this objective. It is important to pay attention to quality in every aspect of patient care, both medical and non-medical.

Study limitations

The sample was restricted to patients from the general surgery, obstetrics and internal medical units. In addition, the study was conducted in a single private hospital in Turkey. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized to all hospitals. Future studies should include more than one hospital in both the private and public sectors and the nursing care provided in private and public hospitals should be compared.

Conclusion

The results revealed that nurses should inform patients about each application and procedure and provide necessary explanations about illness, diagnosis and treatment to ensure patient satisfaction and the provision of high‐quality nursing care.

Regards
Rutherford
Managing Editor
Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Education