Hospitals survey: Nearly half of all patients were not warned of side effects of medication prescribed to them during their hospital stay, according to the findings of the largest national survey ever carried out on Irish hospital patients.
Launching The Patients' View yesterday, Minister for Health Mary Harney said while the findings were positive in general, it did single out areas where there was "room for improvement".
Ms Harney highlighted the fact that 93 per cent of respondents were satisfied with the service they received during their hospital stay.
However, she noted that communication with hospital staff was singled out as a cause for concern in the report and said we must "ensure that patients are listened to and treated with dignity and respect".
One-fifth of patients stated that they had questions they would like to have asked their healthcare team but did not do so, with one in 10 saying they felt too intimidated to ask.
A quarter of patients reported that staff discussed medical issues at their bedside while ignoring them.
Carried out by the Irish Society for Quality and Safety in Healthcare (ISQSH) the survey was based on 4,820 patients' experiences of their stay in 26 hospitals throughout Ireland.
It found that less than half of patients observed members of their healthcare team wash their hands prior to carrying out an examination on them.
Ninety-seven per cent of patients reported that a member of their healthcare team confirmed their identity prior to performing a procedure or an operation and 89 per cent reported the same prior to administering medication. This figure should be 100 per cent, according to Ms Harney.
The report also highlighed continuing difficulties in the Government's waiting list initiative. While half of patients were admitted to hospital from a waiting list within three months, one in eight reported delays of one year or more.
This compares with 7 per cent in a similar study conducted in 2002.
Almost one in five reported that their original date of admission had been changed by the hospital and more than 11 per cent had their admission date changed three times or more.
While more than 80 per cent of all patients said they were seen by a doctor in A&E within three hours, 11 per cent had to wait 12 hours or more for a bed.
Responding to the findings that only 26 per cent of patients who complained about an aspect of their stay in hospital were satisfied with the outcome, Ms Harney said "patients and their families are entitled to the expectation that every complaint would be taken seriously".
President of the ISQSH Maire Kehoe said that if people expected good customer service in all walks of life, why should they expect less of their healthcare service, where the "cost of poor quality is people's lives"?
Healthcare providers need to view the quality of care through the eyes of the patient and to listen to the patient, according to Ms Kehoe who said that many of the weaknesses highlighted in the report would not require massive financial resources.