Outpatient experiences of caring in the outpatient clinic: a qualitative research

Objective To explore the outpatients' experience of caring and provide references for improving their experience of medical care. Methods The phenomenology research method was adopted in this study, and twenty-one outpatients were subject to an in-depth interview to learn their outpatient experiences. Results Ten themes of experience with caring were extracted as follows: passionate and patient, careful and considerate, respect for others, offers to help, encouraging and comforting, apologies and courteously, humor, truthful considerations, conscientious and responsible, and a caring environment setup.Five themes of experience without caring were extracted as follows: impatient communication, careless seeing of outpatients, delayed service, passive reminders, and facilities without enough details. Conclusions The outpatients may have abundant experiences of caring at the outpatient clinic, also lack of caring sometimes as well.Outpatient managers should keep an eye on outpatients' needs and satisfaction of caring from time to time, to improve the quality of outpatient service. Key words: Outpatient clinic; Patients; Caring; Experience; Qualitative research