Abstract

Patient satisfaction is a useful measure to provide an indicator of quality in healthcare services. Concern over the quality of healthcare services in Bangladesh has led to loss of faith in healthcare providers, low utilization of public health facilities, and increasing outflow of Bangladeshi patients to hospitals in abroad. The main barriers to accessing health services are inadequate services and poor quality of existing facilities, shortage of medicine supplies, busyness of doctors due to high patient load, long travel distance to facilities, and long waiting times once facilities were reached, very short consultation time, lack of empathy of the health professionals, their generally callous and casual attitude, aggressive pursuit of monetary gains, poor levels of competence and, occasionally, disregard for the suffering that patients endure without being able to voice their concerns—all of these service failures are reported frequently in the print media. Such failures can play a powerful role in shaping patients’ negative attitudes and dissatisfaction with healthcare service providers and healthcare itself.