Student
Dissertation 3rd Batch 
Perception and Level of Satisfaction of the Elderly towards Responsiveness of Health Workers
Geofrey Kaindi Mabuba
Abstract
Responsiveness means how health system performs relative to non-health aspects, meeting or not meeting a population’s expectations of what should be treated by providers of prevention, care or non personal services. It is not a measure of how the system responds to health needs, which shows up in health outcomes. Health system differs from other social system such as education, trades, etc in two ways which makes the goal of responsiveness particularly significant. One is that health care can be catastrophically costly. Most of the needs for care are unpredictable. The other unique feature of health care is the illness itself, and that can threaten people’s dignity. Moreover responsiveness means reducing damages to individual’s dignity, and other shame that may come as a result of sickness. Health system cannot be separated from health workers, who form health system. In order to measure the responsiveness of the system we have to see how non-medical requirements of patients are fulfilled by health workers. Responsiveness has two main aspects: One is respect of persons and the second being client orientation. The first incorporates issues such as dignity, autonomy and confidentiality, while the latter relates to prompt attention, quality of basic amenities, and choice of care provider and access to social support networks during care. According to WHO responsiveness is a new area of research with no easy to use measuring tool. In developing countries health system research focusing on issues of responsiveness is in infancy.
