Journal of

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Background: The subjects' demographic characteristics are factors influencing their viewpoints about healthcare quality and have a positive association with the clients’ satisfaction. This study aimed at investigating the role of demographic variables on medical tourists' viewpoints about service quality of hospitals in Shiraz.

Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 foreign patients who referred to Shiraz hospitals during the first six months of 2013. Data collection tool was a questionnaire consisting of two parts. In the first part, medical tourists' information was collected and in the second part, their expectations and perceptions of services quality were measured using adapted SERVQUAL scale. The validity was checked out by experts and reliability confirmed by Cronbach’s Alpha test for expectations and perceptions separately (90% and 89%).  Finally, data analyzed through SPSS v.16 software using independent t-test and ANOVA.

Result: According to the results, the mean score of the quality gap was estimated -0.26 for people over the age of 50 years, as it was lower than other groups. Also, the lowest total values of this quantity were related to the individuals with low level of literacy and those who stayed less than 7 days for treatment which were estimated -0.32 and -0.36 respectively. In addition, based on statistically significant dimensions, married tourists, people from Oman and those who had received eye surgery had lower gap mean score than the other patients as their total values were estimated -0.42, -0.21 and -0.22, respectively.

Conclusion: In order to develop the medical tourism industry, the demographic characteristics of the subjects should be considered in policy making and service design which can be result in majority satisfaction.

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Background: Although the role of Spirituality has been acknowledged in the social entrepreneurship literature, we know of no research that has empirically investigated relationships between spiritual intelligence and health and care benefactors. Thus, this paper aims to propose and empirically test a theoretical model positing relationships among spiritual intelligence and intentions of hospital-makers benefactors. Materials & Methods: This study is descriptive which is conducted with total number of 164 hospital-makers benefactors, and is tested by path analysis. For measuring spiritual intelligence, three questionnaires distributed between every subject and two of his/her acquaintances. Results: The results suggest that spiritual intelligence and other related variables explained 41 per cent of the variance in the rate of hospital-makers benefactors intentions (R2=0/41) that is a sizable amount in behavioral studies. Results provide strong support for the proposition that social mission and social responsibility fully mediate the positive effect of spiritual intelligence on intentions of hospital-makers benefactor. Conclusion: With existence of opportunities for merely finical investments, hospital-makers benefactors should have high levels of spiritual intelligence to gain motivation for social wealth creation. Policy-makers of health system, to increase charitable activities, should focus on heightening spiritual intelligence in health and care sector.

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Background: Reduction of errors is necessary to improve the quality of healthcare, promoting communication between the hospital staff and patients, and decreasing the patient's complaints in hospitals. Due to the high probability of error in the operating room (OR), this study aimed to detect the potential errors in the OR of Nemazee hospital using FMEA.
Materials and Methods: This study was a qualitative one which assessed Failure Mode and effects of OR in six steps using FMEA technique. At First, the OR activities were listed, then the failure modes were recognized. Next, the Risk Priority Number (RPN) of each error was calculated according to the indicators of Occurrence (O), Severity (S) and Detectability (D).
 Results: Totally,204 failure modes in 36 activities in five process in surgery ward were recognized.15.7 percent of failure modes classified as high risk factors (RPN ≥ 100). The most and the least distribution of origin factors were related to human and organization and technical errors, respectively.
Conclusion: The majority of errors in OR was set in of human skills category. Besides, the most and the least failure modes were belonged to “patient anesthesia by circular activity number 20, RPN=1795.23)” and “not to oxygenation for patients (the activity number 36, RPN=99.33) respectively. Identification of 36 activities and 204 errors in the 5 processes of Operating Room represents the comprehensiveness of HFMEA method in the identification, classification, evaluation and analysis of the health system errors.