The service quality of the nursing services at Sibu Hospital, Sarawak / Tracy Tumay Rigar and Patricia Saga

Nowadays, the number of complaints regarding the issues of the nursing services are increasing. Besides that, due to the slogan of 'People First, Performance Now' by the current Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, it has result in the increase of the affluent society and thus, they are getting more demanding in receiving better service quality from the government organizations. The purpose of conducting this study is to investigate the service quality of the nursing services at the Sibu Hospital, Sarawak. Service quality refers to the differences between the expectation of the customers towards the service and the real performance of the service providers. In conducting this study, we are using the SERVQUAL standardized questionnaire. The SERVQUAL consists of five dimensions which are tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The population of this study was all the in-patients at the Sibu Hospital, excluding the out-patients, critical; in-patients, and those who were of unsound mind. At the time of the distribution of the questionnaires, there were about 127 of such patients. The questionnaires were being distributed to all of the 127 patients, but only 100 patients were willing to answer. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 20.0. Basically, the service quality of the services provided by the Sibu Hospital nurses in the five dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) are of high quality services. Besides that, the responsiveness dimension has the lowest level of quality among the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL. In addition, there is no significant difference between the gender of the patients and their perception towards the service quality of the services provided by the Sibu Hospital nurses. It could also be concluded that the tangibles and reliability dimensions do significantly differ across the four groups of income level. However, the responsiveness, assurance, and empathy dimensions do not significantly differ across the four groups of income level. In conclusion, the nurses play an important role in satisfying patients' expectations as they are the primary point of contact between patients and the world of healthcare. Thus, it is a hope that the Sibu Hospital nurses would be able to provide a quality service towards the patients in order to enable the patients to have a good service experience and thus, create a good image of the Sibu Hospital as a whole.