Assessment of quality laboratory services in the prospect of laboratory personnel status, facility, safety and client satisfaction in Addis Ababa government health centers and hospitals, Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: The laboratory services are essential component of health services in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. But laboratory infrastructure and test quality for all types of clinical laboratories remain back warded in most countries in Africa. In spite of its ancient civilization, Ethiopia today is one of the least developed countries with low development indicators. For example, Ethiopian health care system in terms of infrastructure and personnel is about one third of Kenya’s. So the concerned bodies should address the urgent need of strengthen laboratory system and services in order to achieve the delivery of quality health service. Objective: to assess the quality of laboratory service in the prospect of status of personnel, facility and safety of the laboratory room and client satisfaction level of clients with the service. Method: The study was conducted in Addis Ababa city starting from September to October 2013G.C. Facility based cross-sectional study design was employed on government health centers and hospitals laboratories by interviewing the laboratory professionals and clients. The study included all laboratory personnel working in 10 randomly selected health centers and 4 selected hospitals and 422 laboratory clients in the selected facilities. The sample was distributed to each facility proportional to the average number of clients of the laboratory serve in a month. Results: Ninety laboratory personnel involved in the personnel and safety assessment. Half of the participants were female. More than half of them took laboratory quality management training (57.8%), seventy seven (85.6%) said all laboratory work is done by authorized person, 97.8% reassured presence of personnel file. Only 45% of them realized the presence of training plan. A total of 422 laboratory clients participated for satisfaction assessment. Two hundred forty seven (58.5%) of them were female. The overall satisfaction level was 54.0% with maximum and minimum satisfaction of 83.0% and 25.0% respectively. Availability of waiting area was found to be the predictor of satisfaction. Weak attention was given for safety of clients, personnel, community members and provision of safety materials. Conclusion: Quality of laboratory service concerning personnel and client satisfaction is lower than other studies conducted in different areas, wrong perception of the personnel in taking responsibility to improve the quality of their laboratory and weak attention given for safety. Generally low activities were done on improving quality.