INFLUENCE OF ETHICAL STANDARD COMPLIANCE ON QUALITY SERVICE DELIVERY IN TEACHING HOSPITALS NORTH-WEST NIGERIA.

Abstract

The study examines Ethical standard compliance and quality service delivery in teaching hospitals in North-West Nigeria. The provision of adequate treatment, training and research, which are the functions of teaching hospitals will be difficult to attain without a well-organized, effective and efficient health information management department. The study adopted the survey research design to investigate six teaching hospitals in the North-West, Nigeria. Proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to administer copies of questionnaire to 243 health information managers (HIM) and 443 patients but 71.8% and 91.9% were returned respectively for data analysis. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency counts, percentage, mean and standard deviation). Findings revealed that the extent of quality service delivery in teaching hospitals North-West Nigeria, was high (x̅=3.30), on a scale of 4. Further analysis depicted that all the indicators of quality service delivery show high values:  assurance (x̅=3.32), empathy (x̅=3.31), tangibles (x̅=3.30), responsiveness (x̅=3.29) and reliability (x̅=3.26). The prevalent organizational culture in teaching hospitals North-West Nigeria were mission (x̅=3.46), involvement (x̅=3.45), adaptability (x̅=3.41) and consistency (x̅=3.41). Ethical standard compliance had a significant influence on quality service delivery of HIM in teaching hospitals, North-West Nigeria (R²= 0.122, β = 0.350, t (231) = 5.687, p<0.05). It was, therefore, recommended that management of the teaching hospitals should optimize the ethical compliance of HIM by paying attention to ethical values such as granting patients’ rights to confidentiality of health information, good documentation of patients records, avoiding carelessness on duty and prevention of breach of confidential relationship with patients.