Patient satisfaction with intensive care psychiatric services: Can it be assessed?

Abstract

The evaluation of the success of any service must include patients' views. However, some clinicians have doubted the value of soliciting the views of psychiatric patients, especially those suffering from severe mental illness. This paper focuses specifically on those patients who were admitted to an intensive care ward. These patients are often the most difficult to engage in services and are often thought to provide a stringent test of making an assessment of patients' satisfaction with a psychiatric service. The patients surveyed here were, in fact, able to provide detailed views on the service they had been offered, as well as providing constructive criticism. This was despite the obviously fragile nature of their mental state. All patients providing this sort of information must be given adequate feedback with an emphasis on what changes can be achieved so that it is not a sterile exercise which may later lose all credibility.