earticle

영어

This study purposed to analyze difference in expectation and perception of service quality for the physical therapy patients and to provide basic data for maintaining high service quality that meets patients’ anticipation in each service area. A questionnaire survey with physical therapy patients was conducted in J city from Oct 3, 2011 to Nov 15, 2011 and 154 questionnaires were used in analysis. The instrument used in this study to measure service quality was prepared by the researcher through adapting and supplementing the SERVQUAL model developed by Parasuraman et al (1991). For the physical therapy setting, it was consisted of a total of 23 questions in five areas, namely; tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The result showed patients’ perception of service quality was high in order of reliability, assurance, empathy, responsiveness, and tangibility while patients’ expectation of the service quality showed high in order of empathy, assurance, reliability, responsiveness, and tangibility. As revealed in the result, empathy was the most expectation for the patients, however reliability was perceived as the highest. Thus, there exists some difference between in the expectation and in the perception. Out of these areas, the outcome of tangibility and empathy was lower in perception, meanwhile reliability was higher in perception than in expectation, however, these three areas were statistically significant. Consequently, to reduce the difference between in the perception and in the expectation of service quality by patients, it is necessarily considered to provide education for the physical therapists’ perception of service quality and measures for improving service quality so that services would be provided through respectful communication with maintaining the self-esteem of patients, rather than focusing on disease.