ABSTRACT
Introduction: The reduction of hospital admissions in order to cut costs and to psychologically relief patients led to the concept and operation of Day Clinics.
Purpose: On the one hand to evaluate the effectiveness of the operation of Day Clinics and on the other hand to assess client’s satisfaction.
Literature Review: A literature review in English and in Greek in the databases of Pubmed and Elsevier was conducted without a time limit. A secondary search was conducted by investigating the reference lists of the gathered literature. Key words used were: day ward/clinic/ unit/hospital service, effectiveness, satisfaction.
Results: Regarding day clinics’ operation fourteen studies were reviewed, all quantitative: two systematic reviews, six surveys, one quasi-experimental and five experimental studies about psychiatric, geriatric, cardiological, infectious diseases, gynecological, intestinal, and respiratory day clinics. Regarding clients’ satisfaction over day clinics ten studies were reviewed. Seven of them were quantitative (surveys) and three were qualitative (two phenomenology studies and one using focus groups). They were about oncology, medicalsurgical and geriatric day clinics.
Conclusions: Day clinics seem to be effective in terms of outputs and cost reduction. Clients seem to be satisfied. The extent of their satisfaction depends on waiting time, surroundings, health education potentials, information material, consultation, relationships with the health staff, planning and organization of the day clinic.
Keywords: day ward/clinic/ unit/hospital service, effectiveness, satisfaction