Impact of Frontline Staff’ Behaviors and Waiting Time on Patients’ Behavior in the Outpatient Departments (OPDs): A Cross-Sectional Study of Tertiary Care Hospitals

Healthcare is a crucial service whereby frontline workers' behavior and waiting time play more critical roles in the quality of the service than other services. As patients are exposed to a more unstable psychological state, their behavioral dissonances may hinder the quality of care provided. Employee patterns for both employees and patients are critical aspects of healthcare leadership and management alike. However, frontline employee behavior and waiting time domains are missing in the emerging economies context, especially in Pakistan, where these fundamentals of patients’ resulting behaviors, remained unexplored. This study, therefore, investigated the impact of frontline employees and waiting time on the patients' behavior. A quantitative, cross-sectional approach was applied with deductive logic to conduct this study. A pre-validated structured questionnaire, adapted and cited from different sources, was administered among patients in five major, private tertiary care hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan through a non-probability judgmental sampling. The findings revealed a significant effect of both the behavior of employees and waiting time on the patients’ behavior. This study can be utilized at a wider level to adopt the need for further reforms in tertiary care setups in Pakistan at the rural level and policymakers may use the findings to train empathy and a patient-centric approach to the behavior of employees to counter unpleasant patient behavior and produce satisfaction leading to improved quality of care and to combat waiting time, patient dissatisfaction, patients complains and overcrowding challenges faced by tertiary hospitals in urban areas.