Experience of the Consumer Emergency Care Satisfaction Scale in an Italian emergency room

Background: The nursing care is one of the most important predictor of overall patient’s satisfaction. In Italy such researches are few, especially regarding emergency unit, and they use not-validated instruments. The aim of this study was to measure and describe the relationship between patient satisfaction and nursing care provided in a Emergency Room. Methods: The study took place between 2010 - 2011 in a town hospital of Grosseto-Italy. A trained operator administered the italian version of the Consumer Emergency Care Satisfaction Scale questionnaire (CECCS) to patients having white-blue-green code who were admitted at the Emergency Room. CECCS has two scales: Caring (CS), with 12 items, each scoring from 1 to 5 and Teaching Ability (TS), 3 items, each scoring from 1 to 5. When the CS and TS score are respectively from 12 to 32 and from 3 to 7 patients are not satisfied, from 33 to 42 and from 8 to 10 patients are neutral and from 43 to 60 and 11 to 15 patients are satisfied. Results: A total of 160 CECCS questionnaires were administered. The sample consisted of 54% males and 46% females, 94% Italians and 6% foreigners. Focusing on code of admission, 84% of patients had a green code, 16% a blue/white code. After triage, the 76% of patients lied in waiting for medical examination less than 30 minutes, 14% from 30 to 60 minutes and 10% from 1 to 3 hours. The 54% of discharges occurred after 1 to 3 hours, 33% under 30 minutes, 11% from 3 to 6 hours and 2% after 6 hours. Regarding the “CS” 95% of patients were satisfied, while through “TS” 58,7% of patients resulted satisfied, 41,3% not satisfied. Finally, the overall satisfaction with Emergency Care saw the 31% of patients very satisfied, 67% satisfied and 2 % not satisfied. Conclusions: This survey highlighted the efficiency (short time of waiting and discharges) and the efficacy (the emergency nurses matched patient’s expectation in both CECCS scales and patient’s overall satisfaction obtained one of the higher score) of our Emergency Room. However, to express a complete judgment of Emergency Unit, one of CECCS limits is that it does not report information about the performances of Emergency personnel in case of yellow and red codes.