[Degree of patient satisfaction regarding the reception given by emergency service nurses]

Humanizing in hospitals begins with the patients' reception. Although this "function" should be considered as the duty of every person who works in Hospital, it is fundamental to be assumed as a nursing service, since we are the professional sector which spends more time with the patient. However, the reception may have positive or negative effects on the patient's recovery and on the Health Unit's image. Thus, and having the mission of optimizing the quality of health care, mainly as far as reception is concerned, with this study came out, through which we intend to analyse the patient's level of satisfaction as for the reception offered by the nurse in the Emergency Service of Hospital São Marcos de Braga. It is a study of a descriptive and exploratory nature, within a quantitative approach. To carry out this empirical study, we considered as target population the patients who needed the Emergency Service in the period between January and March of 2002, both male and female (about 50% of each), 50% of rural patients and 50% of urban patients, between the ages of 18 and 65 who stayed in this service from 3 to 12 hours. A random and representative selection of patients was taken, based on the criteria previously mentioned. We obtained a sample of 1440 patients through a random selection of 5 patients in the morning shift, 6 patients in the afternoon shift and 5 patients in the night shift, during the period in which the study was carried out. This study was carried out without the presence of the participants in the survey.