Patient Satisfaction in the Critical Care Unit: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study

Patients' perceptions of their medical care are of increasing importance to educators, researchers, and clinicians. The emphasis on patient experience and satisfaction is consistent with the trend towards holding health care professionals accountable to their consumers. Our understanding and advancement of patients' experience and satisfaction with care forms a pivotal role in ensuring individuals engage with healthcare services, adhere to therapies, and maintain ongoing relationships with providers. Experiences are best explored using interview techniques such as phenomenological interviewing. In our study we propose to use a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Phenomenology is a way of qualitatively exploring a person's experience and their personal meanings from those experiences. It is an approach that considers the structure of a person's subjective experience and explores areas that might be hidden. A phenomenological approach looks for patterns that are shared by particular instances or experiences. The evaluation of patient satisfaction and experience is based on valuing patients' subjective perception of an experience. In our study, a phenomenological approach will generate a comprehensive description of a phenomenon or lived experience (i.e. stay in the Critical Care Unit). We will interview a sample of patients to explore experiences and to gain their meanings of their stay in critical care. This will hopefully lead to thinking around ways of improving patient experiences, satisfaction and care.