Patients’ subjective well-being: Determinants and its usage as a metric of healthcare service quality

Abstract

It is commonly suggested that patients’ subjective well-being (SWB) can be affected by pre-treatment conditions and treatment experiences, and hence SWB can be used to measure and improve healthcare quality. With data collected in a hospital in the UK (N = 446), we investigated the determinants of patients’ SWB and evaluated its use in healthcare research. Our findings showed strong relationships between pre-treatment conditions and patients’ SWB: anxiety and depression negatively predicted SWB across all three domains, mobility positively predicted the life satisfaction and happiness domains, while the ability to self care and pain and discomfort also predicted SWB in some domains. In contrast, patients’ satisfaction with the treatment only played minor roles in determining SWB, much less so the characteristics of their nurses. The general lack of associations between treatment experiences and patient’s SWB highlighted the challenges of using SWB to measure healthcare quality and inform policy making.