**1. Introduction**

The Medical Laboratory is a laboratory that is equipped with biomedical instrument/equipment, materials and reagent (chemicals) for performing different medical laboratory tests using biological specimen (whole blood, serum, plasma, urine, stool, swab, sputum, exudates etc.), for disease discovery management and healthy living assessment. In the medical laboratory, some services like arrangements for test requests, preparation of patients, patient identification, samples collection, transportation, storage, processing and examination, test validation,

interpretation, reporting and advice, in addition to safety and ethics are carried out during medical laboratory services [1, 2].

Treatment by patients themselves or treatment as a result of prescription given by a physician or other healthcare givers without the medical laboratory test leads to self-medication and medical guess work respectively. Cost of diagnosis could probably have contributed to the poor attitude towards visiting medical laboratories for proper diagnosis [1].

Patients' satisfaction is imperative for success. Without the patient in the laboratory, there would not be medical laboratory testing and examination of specimens in the laboratory. Patient are the most essential values in the hospital environment, medical laboratory inclusive. Just as patients contribute to safety in healthcare [3], patients equally contribute to medical laboratory services and quality of healthcare in general.

Medical laboratories continuously strive to attain very high levels of customer's satisfaction thereby serving their clients, improving quality and maintaining accreditation. The concept of customer service has not yet been made popular and accepted in most medical laboratories [4].

Patients' satisfaction is a component of healthcare quality and is increasingly being used to assess medical care in many countries in the world. Until recently traditional assessments of medical care were done purely in terms of technical and physiological reports of outcomes [5–8]. This patient/client satisfaction in the medical laboratory services is equally needed especially in Nigeria and other African countries and no wonder this chapter.
