Abedi G, Ebadattalab I, Rostami F.
Background & Objectives: The first fundamental stage to design plans for quality promotion is to recognize service customers’ perception & expectation on service quality, to identify the gap & to take measures to bridge the gap. The study aims to analyze nursing services quality gap in the selective academic hospitals in Mazandaran province in 2011.
Materials & Methods: This study has been performed using a descriptive, cross sectional method. The sample consist of patients who have been inpatients for at least 2 days. A total of 210 individuals were selected based on accessible sampling in a 10-day period of time. Collecting data was done by a researcher-developed questionnaire. To analyze data, variance analysis, t- test and Doncan tests were applied. Findings: The results indicate that the lowest gap is in human behavior and dignities aspect, whereas the highest gap is in physical and tangible one. Service quality mean in perception dimension was assessed equal to 2.83 on a scale of 1 to 5, whereas the expectation was scored 4.13 on a scale of 1 to 5. Moreover, the gap between perception and expectation had a mean of 1.26.
Conclusion: The results show that the quality gap was meaningful in all aspects. Besides, in none of the aspects, it was beyond the respondents’ expectation; thus special attention by managers should be made in order to promote the quality of services offered in aspects with the highest gap is inevitable.
