**7. Medical laboratory clients and patients survey instruments**

The medical laboratory service clients/patients' survey should address pertinent satisfaction and quality issues [29, 30] as presented in the **Table 3** below.


**Table 3.**

*Client dimension of experience, definitions and director medical laboratory service review codes.*

*Patients' (Clients) Satisfaction with Medical Laboratory Services Contributes to Health… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99290*

#### **7.1 Preparation and examples**

In preparation of medical laboratory service survey instrument, there is need to have a background of the client of interest. Patients and patients' relatives, Physicians and healthcare providers, public health and government, communities and interested parties and medical laboratory professionals as the client of interest give the picture of the adequate demographics and question content necessary at any time of survey. Equally, the survey may be prepared in three, four or five likert scale as may be structured by the auditor or the investigator. It shall be prepared to the standard and language the participant shall understand. Example of such survey is for the patient visiting a diagnostic centre in Jos (Template of Customer survey instrument) as seen below with three likert scale.

#### **7.2 Administration of survey tools**

The status of the medical laboratory service provider and her clients determines the way the survey tool can be administered. The survey tool can be administered in hard or soft copies to customers of a laboratory facility that is interested in the assessment. Hard copies can be given to customers after services delivery before departure from the facility while soft copies or online survey using survey monkey for instance or soft copies can be shared to clients via e-mails or social media such as Whatsapp, Twitter, facebook, etc. for convenience.

#### **7.3 Data analysis**

Data analysis of medical laboratory services survey of customers can be analyzed by the assessor or auditor or quality officer in charge. The analysis may be in percentages, means or use of SPSS or other statistical tools. This may involve the services of a statistician.

#### **7.4 Implementation of findings from the patients**

Having carried out the medical laboratory customers/patients' survey, implementation is very important by the quality officer or the human resources manager or Director, medical laboratory services. Any attempt to disregard patients' feedback may cause persistent disruption of testing because by the patient in the case of repeated visits. If not well handled, patients' medical laboratory experience can turn them off from allowing the physician to send them to the same laboratory and in turn makes the physician or other healthcare workers to stop or reduce referring of patients. The survey gives patients/customers a voice, about their needs and expectations and equally aids improvement.

The implementation of findings may be in the positive or negative depending on the variable involved. Oja et al. [30] puts it that "Customer satisfaction surveys cannot result in quality improvement, if proper corrective actions are not carried out".
