HEALTH PROFESSIONALS' KNOWLEDGE ASSESSMENT OF HOSPITAL ACCREDITATION AND ITS IMPACT ON PATIENT CARE IN SAUDI ARABIA: A GENDER AND HOSPITAL SIZE STUDY

Abstract

Hospital accreditation is gaining popularity to improve both the quality of patient care and hospital improvement. In this study, we intend to explore the perceptions of healthcare professionals toward Saudi Arab hospital accreditation. In addition to this to empirically measure differences in the perception of male and female health professionals and in the perception of health professionals connected with small, medium, and large size hospitals. The collected data reliability was tested through Cronbach’s Alpha before and after exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out to extract the latent constructs of health professionals’ perceived effects of hospital accreditation. Common variance method (CVM) Harman's single factor test were carried out to avoid any type of uncertain potential biases. The D’Agostino skewness test was used to investigate whether the distributions of the latent constructs were left or right-skewed. Chi-square test were used to identify correlations between healthcare professional’s sociodemographic characteristics and their behavioral intentions toward hospital accreditation. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test and Kruskal–Wallis test were used to identify differences in the perception of male and female health professionals and in the perception of health professionals connected with small, medium, and large size hospitals. We found that health professionals believe that hospital accreditation plays a positive role in improving both patient quality care and the hospital. However, we found that there is a difference in the knowledge of male and female healthcare professionals about hospital accreditation. In Saudi Arab male healthcare professionals are more aware of hospital accreditation compared to female. In addition to this, we also found that there is a difference in the knowledge of local and non-local healthcare professionals about hospital accreditation. Overall our study results suggest that hospital accreditation play a positive role in both providing quality care to patients and in the improvement of hospital. This study provides important practical implications for Saudi Arab hospitals on enhancing the quality of accreditation and more focus on local health professionals, especially females to provide different trainings for improvement knowledge about hospital accreditation and its importance in patients’ quality care improvement of hospital.