Understanding Youth Experience in Healthcare: Focus on Accessibility, Compassion and Satisfaction

Youth perception regarding the use of public and private healthcare services is a topic of interest nowadays due to the impact they can have on improved accessibility and trust for the users. The literature review showed the present youth perception regarding the public and private healthcare services, and the impact worldwide, as well as in Romanian healthcare. The purpose of this research is to investigate the perspectives of Romanian young people towards the public and private healthcare system, focusing on characteristics such as accessibility, quality, communication and compassion with patients, as well as the satisfaction they had as a result of the healthcare services they received. The research method used for this study is quantitative research using a self-administered questionnaire, with structured questions. The 190 responses received were processed with Chi-square, Spearman and Kendall’s Tau B, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U tests, ordinal logistic regression and CB-SEM with the help of Jamovi software. The results showed that the youth population appreciates easy access to medical services and a certain continuity in the care and treatment process, together with a high degree of quality of the services provided, this leading to the satisfaction of the users that benefit from the healthcare services in private and public systems. Importance and relevance of the proper communication and compassion of the medical workers contribute to the overall satisfaction for the services received by the youth population. The managerial implications following these findings are relevant to the current reality of the healthcare sector, with emphasis on quality and satisfaction that leads to improved accessibility and trust of the youth population. In addition, research complements the theoretical framework through the empirical information received through the analysis.