Comparison of Patients’ and Health Care Providers’ Perceptions of the Quality of Diabetes Care for Patients with Type 2 Diabetes at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital

The dramatic worldwide increase in the prevalence of T2DM is posing a massive health problem in both developed and developing countries. In order to improve quality, patients’ views are important in identifying what is important to them. However, to date, no literature has revealed the comparison of patients’ and healthcare providers’ perceptions on quality of care received by T2DM patients in The Gambia.
The study design was a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. Patients with Type 2 diabetes at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital and nurses and physicians involved in the care of diabetic patients were recruited as samples in this study. Data were collected using Pouwer’s and Snoek’s (2002) Patients’ Evaluation of the Quality of Diabetes Care (PEQD) scale. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics including, frequency, standard deviation, numbers, percentages and mean scores to compare the perception of quality of diabetes care between patients and healthcare providers. The t-tests were used to compare the means of the 10 item scores regarding quality of diabetes care.
The results revealed that healthcare providers reported the highest endorsement for most aspects of diabetes care. These include availability of prescribed diabetic medications, clarity of information, amount of information, usefulness of information, emotional support, opportunity to ask questions and opportunity to share decisions. Conversely, all these aspects of care were lowly rated among patients. However, the duration of time to wait until the next appointment with the physician and overall quality of diabetes care was highly rated among patients than healthcare providers.
In summary, despite the high endorsement for most aspects of care among a substantial proportion of healthcare providers, the overall ratings for all aspects of diabetes care are generally low and therefore depicts that quality of care for T2DM at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital is suboptimal. Thus, findings of this study highlights the need to conduct further research to explore into the perceptions of both patients and healthcare providers in order to serve the needs of diabetic patients better and to bridge perception gaps between patients and healthcare providers. Hence, the study demonstrates a significant opportunity to improve quality and organizational efficiency of diabetes care services at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital and other health facilities in The Gambia. It will also help the Ministry of Health to formulate and adopt realistic policies and care model for practice in general and for diabetic care in particular.