Evaluation of the Quality of the Pregnancy Care from the Perspective of Service Recipients using the SERVQUAL Model
QC08-QC12
Correspondence
Dr. Roonak Shahoei,
Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Kurdistan, Iran.
E-mail: rshaho@yahoo.com
Introduction: Now-a-days, pregnancy care is considered as one of the main public health focus. Pregnancy care plays an important role in the health of the mother, the newborn and the family. Therefore, efforts to evaluate the quality of care are necessary for encouraging the policymakers to create an effective program for improving the quality of health services.
Aim: To determine the quality of pregnancy care from the perspective of service recipients using the SERVQUAL model in comprehensive health centers of Sanandaj of, Iran in 2018.
Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was conducted on 384 pregnant women who were referred to the comprehensive health centers of Sanandaj for receiving pregnancy care. Population sampling was done based on the classification method. Data collection was performed by the standard SERVQUAL questionnaire, which measures the quality gap in five dimensions of the service (sensibility, reliability, assurance, responsibility, and empathy) using 22 questions. Data were analysed by SPSS-23 software using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and t-tests.
Results: In all five dimensions of the quality of services provided (sensibility, reliability, responsibility, assurance, and empathy), there was a negative quality gap. The highest mean quality gap was in the reliability dimension (-1.84) and the lowest mean gap was seen in the empathy dimension (-1.49).
Conclusion: Data analysis showed that in all five dimensions of the quality of services, the expectation level of service recipients was beyond the level of their perceptions, and the quality improvement in the various aspects seems to be necessary.