Patient waiting time is a real problem in Fiji and
unfortunately Nadi Sub-divisional hospital is no
exception.
The objective of this study was to determine
patient waiting time in the GOPD and SOPD
clinic in the Nadi Sub-divisional Hospital,
additionally to gauge patient satisfaction.
Time logs were given to patients in order to log
the time as the patient went through the diffrent
management and investigation. Secondly a
questionnaire was given to every 20th patient to
measure their satisfaction with the services they
received in GOPD and SOPD.
The results showed that it took 2 hours and 57
minutes on average for a patient to be attended
by a doctor in the GOPD clinic and 2 hours and
7 minutes in the SOPD clinic. 50% of all patients
sampled believed that there should be more
doctors and 36% complained of the shortage of
drugs at the pharmacy.
Any improvement to the quality of health care
delivery in the Nadi Sub-Divisional hospital
needs to include an increase in doctors as well
as addressing how to prevent common drug
shortages in the pharmacy department.