Perceived quality of care in public hospitals in Côte d'Ivoire

Faced with the deterioration in the care provided to users in hospitals a number of studies have attempted to develop theories and concepts with a view to making proposals for improvement. Despite the efforts of researchers and the will of decision-makers the results do not seem to meet users' expectations. We're seeing more and more complaints and recriminations. The models proposed have failed to identify certain important dimensions in explaining perceived quality of care. In order to provide a holistic response to the perception of quality we have drawn on the concepts of lived experience and the state of anxiety of hospital users hitherto unexplored in the literature. Our work sheds further light on the shortcomings of previous studies. The research was carried out in two phases. An initial exploratory qualitative phase involving 20 users identified the dimensions of lived experience and gave rise to the concept of hospital users' state of anxiety.