Abstract:
The purpose of this study was three-fold: to investigate and compare the service quality of Phamacy Department at Fort Sanpasittiprasong Hospital, Ubon Ratchathani Province, as perceived by customers classified by gender, age, education, monthly income, marital status, and type of service receivers, and to provide suggestions for the improvement of the service quality.
The sample group consisted of 388 people who received the service from the pharmacy department of Sanpasittiprasong Hospital, selected by means of the disproportionate stratified random sampling. The sample size was determined using Krejcie and Morgan Table. The research instrument was a questionnaire with a five-level rating scale, yielding the reliability value of .96. The descriptive statistics including percentage, means, standard deviation, t-test, and F-test were employed in the data analysis.
The findings were as follows:
1. The largest groups of the respondents were those who were female (59.02%), aged between 21 and 30 (38.80%), holding a bachelors degree or higher (54.90%), and earning monthly income not over 8,000 baht (26.30%), married (52.30%), and out-patients (51.50%).
2. The overall service quality of the pharmacy department was perceived to be at a high level with the aspects of the service quality in a descending order as follows: assurance, reliability, tangibility, apathy, and responsiveness.
3. The comparisons of the perceptions of the customers in each category regarding the service quality revealed the results as follows:
3.1 There was no significant difference in the perceptions about the overall and individual aspects of the service quality among those who were different in gender, age, and marital status.
3.2 The customers who were different in monthly income were significantly different in their opinions regarding the overall service quality and the service quality in the aspects of responsiveness, assurance, and apathy, at the level of .01. Their opinions regarding the other aspects of the service quality were, however, not significantly different.
3.3 The customers who were different in types of service receivers were not significantly different in their opinions regarding the overall service quality. Their opinions regarding the service quality in aspects of reliability and responsiveness were, however, significantly different at the level of 01 and .05 respectively. Their opinions regarding the other aspects of the service quality were not significantly different.
4. The respondents gave suggestions for improvement in the following aspects in a descending order of frequency: more places and officials for drug dispensing should be added; clearly marked drug dispensing counters should be provided; there should be an official to direct people to receive drug dispensing in front of the counter; enough chairs should be provided for waiting people; and people receiving services should be advised to dress properly.