Background: Patient satisfaction is deemed to be one of the important factors which determine the success of health care facility. The real challenge is not getting ready with mere requirements, but also delivers services ensuring good quality. Thus, there is a need to assess the health care systems regarding patient satisfaction as often as possible. Aims & Objective: To measure the patients' satisfaction towards health care services. Material and Methods: A randomly selected 100 patients were interviewed by using pre-structured questionnaires at the end of their O.P.D. visits for 5 days from 16th-20th January, 2012 at Civil Hospital, Surendranagar. While analysing, they were grouped into categories like availability of services, clinical care, waiting time and cost. Results: The overall opinion about the efficiency of hospital was satisfactory in 92% of patients. 68% respondents said that the time of coming to hospital and consulted by doctor was too long. Although in 75% of patients the time devoted by doctor was only between 0-5 min., the communication and explanation of disease by doctors were found satisfactory in 80% and 91% respectively. The need of investigations was necessary as per 90% of patients. Time required to locate and get medicines from pharmacy was satisfactory in nearby all patients. Conclusion: According to patient's opinion, the study revealed that the degree of satisfaction was mild to moderate with respect to waiting time and availability of specialist in the hospital, which need to be further explored and corrected.

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Background: Refractive error could be considered as an avoidable condition among various conditions leading to visual disabilities in children. Present study was conducted with the objective of estimating the prevalence of refractive errors among school children in Surendranagar district. Methods: The study was conducted among the school going children of 10-16 years age group of Surendranagar district of Gujarat state. Total 600 students were examined from rural and urban schools of the district. The study was carried out through oral questionnaire method using pre-designed and pretested Performa followed by ocular examination. Results: Overall prevalence of refractive errors was found to be 29.5%. Headache was the single most common symptom reported by 38.58% children. Nearly 36.54% boys and 36.98% girls had moderate visual impairment while 4.80% boys and 2.75% girls had severe visual impairment. Among the children having refractive errors 61.02% children did not use spectacles. Conclusions: The study shows that children among 10-16 years are at risk of developing refractive errors and many of them are not aware of the refractive errors.

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