Client satisfaction and its correlates of directly observed treatment short course therapy in a tuberculosis unit of Bankura, West Bengal

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is a curable disease still millions of people suffer and many of them die from this disease. Just providing anti-TB medication is not sufficient to ensure that patient to be cured. Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the treatment outcome rates and to find out the determinants of patient satisfaction. Materials and Methods: A clinic-based, descriptive, crosssectional study was conducted in Lokepur Tuberculosis unit (TU) from July 2015 to June 2016. Simple random sampling was adopted to select 50% of the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) centers under that TU. Afterward, complete enumeration of the adult TB patients receiving Category I treatment and registered from June to October 2015 was done from the selected DOTS centers. Exit interview of the patients was conducted using pretested predesigned questionnaire and treatment outcomes were recorded from TB register. Data were entered in MS Excel Spreadsheet and analyzed by SPSS 22.0 version. Results: Treatment success rate of Category I TB patients was about 87%. Almost 76% patients were satisfied with the given services. Treatment success rate was higher among the satisfied (97%) than the not satisfied (57%) clients and the difference was statistically significant. Client satisfaction was statistically associated with gender, residence, educational level, first caregiving person, and decision maker in getting treatment. Conclusion: Concern given to urban slum areas, improvement of literacy status of the patients, arrangement of the alternative sources of income for TB-affected family, and improvement of the knowledge of first caregiving persons are the steps to be taken at this hour