Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on patient satisfaction and surgical outcomes: A retrospective and cross sectional study.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patient satisfaction and surgical outcomes at King Khalid University Hospital in Saudi Arabia. BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected health care systems across developing and developed countries. Therefore, it is important to understand its impact on various parameters of patient care as regards revised infrastructure and policies in hospitals during the pandemic. METHOD: It is a retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted from 13-3-2020 to 26-4-2020 at King Khalid University Hospital in Saudi Arabia. Patient satisfaction and surgical outcomes were the main outcome measures. RESULTS: 331 participants were included in the study (median age: 53 years; 70% female), and 223 completed the patient's satisfaction survey. 260 of the surgeries were non-oncolog cases (78.6%) compared to 71 oncology cases (21.4%). With respect to the surgical outcomes, 12% of the patients required admission to the ICU, and 10.9% developed postoperative complications, most of which were infectious complications. Only 1.8% (6 patients) were re-admitted to the hospital. Three patients died within 30 days post-op (0.9%), all had emergency surgery. Regarding patient satisfaction, 77.6% and 93% of the patients reported that nurses and doctors, respectively, treated them with courtesy and respect, listened to them carefully, and provided clear explanations to them. 90.3% were satisfied with the hospital sanitary measures. 64.1% stated that they got written instructions at the time of discharge. CONCLUSION: The satisfaction level of patients was high for all the studied domains, and there were a small number of complications with overall good surgical outcomes. That indicates that all the actions and policies that were implemented during the pandemic were proven beneficial for the patients. It is recommended to continue those measures until the COVID-19 pandemic is over.