To explore the role of clinical assistants in improving the satisfaction of outpatients and analyze the factors influencing the outpatients′satisfaction.

Two groups of outpatients in a tertiary hospital in China were incorporated: with clinical assistant 352 patients and without clinical assistant 350 patients. The satisfaction of the two groups was investigated by questionnaire which was designed refer to previous studies, and the relevant information were collected by the trained health care workers. SPSS23.0 was used for data management and analysis.

There was no statistically significance of patients′characteristics between the two groups (P>0.05). The patients in the group without clinical assistants had a low satisfaction in the following areas: whether been disturbed (170 cases, 48.6%), one person one clinic (200 cases, 57.1%), sufficient time (184 cases, 52.6%), opportunity to ask question (201 cases, 57.4%), satisfied with the answer of doctor (192 cases, 54.9%). The young and middle-aged patients had lower satisfaction than the elders (P<0.05). Civil servants had lower satisfaction than did patients with other occupations (P<0.05). Patients with a higher education level tended to be more dissatisfied with outpatient services (P<0.05). Patients with FGIDS had a lower satisfaction than did other patients (P<0.05). We observed that there was a significant improvement of satisfaction with the clinical assistants′work (P<0.001).

This study found that the current outpatient satisfaction needs further improvement. Implementing a trained assistant for a physician is practicable and can increase the satisfaction of outpatients. The patients′satisfaction had a difference between different sociodemographic characteristics.