Inpatient Satisfaction on Non-Pharmacological Interventions for Acute Settings: A Systematic Review

Many patients experience stress and dissatisfaction when they are admitted to acute settings, where they receive short-term and active care for severe injuries, illnesses, or surgeries. Patient satisfaction is a key indicator of healthcare quality that affects patient outcomes, service delivery, and safety.

This review aimed at systematically mapping and summarizing the evidence on non-pharmacological interventions that targeted patient satisfaction in inpatient acute settings.

Three electronic databases were searched, including PubMed, EBSCO, and ScienceDirect. The inclusion criteria were: (1) studies of non-pharmacological interventions to improve patients' satisfaction and targeting inpatients between the ages of 19 and 65 years old; (2) studies written in English and published in the last 10 years, starting from 2017. The search results were imported and screened for eligibility on Covidence. The data was then extracted, using a tool entered in Covidence's Extraction 2.0. The extraction tool included domains on both intervention impact and delivery processes.

A total of 11 articles met the inclusion criteria. Randomized control trials represented the most among the group; seven studies were included given that the others were quasi-experimental studies. Those studies were conducted on the different types of services offered in acute care departments. These studies did not use a standardized questionnaire to evaluate their respective trial outcomes or to implement various adapted or adopted modules of intervention. Of note, the intervention was effective in enhancing patient satisfaction in only some of the studies.

Different types of intervention modules have been effective in improving acute care patient satisfaction. However, further studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention among all patients in different acute care departments at the same time.