Customer Quality during Prenatal Care in Health Care Centers in Tabriz City

Background and Objectives : Customer Quality (CQ) refers to customer’s characteristics and is concerned with the knowledge, skills and confidence of health services customers who actively participate with health team in proper decision-making, appropriate activities and changing environment and health related behaviors. The purpose of this study was measuring customer quality of pregnant women during prenatal care. Materials and Methods : This is a cross- sectional study which was conducted with the participation of 185 pregnant women who received prenatal care from urban health centers in Tabriz city. All participants were selected randomly from 40 health centers. Customer quality was measured based on CQMH-CQ questionnaire. Questionnaire content validity was reviewed and confirmed by 10 experts and its reliability was confirmed based on Cronbach's alpha index (α = 0.714). Spss v.17 was used for data analysis. Results : According to the results, the mean score of customer quality among pregnant women was (11.29±) 67.79 and only %14 of the participants reported the highest customer quality score and ability of continuity of care under stressful situations. There was a positive relationship between customer quality score and visiting midwife and a better evaluation of overall quality of care, but there was inverse relationship with early registration at health centers. Conclusion : The participation of pregnant women in service delivery process and decision-making can promote costumer quality. Furthermore, training health care providers in empowering patients and using their abilities to improve quality of care and paying attention to patient-centered care will be helpful.