Since the launch of the ‘triple aim” and the initiation of the Affordable Care Act, the impact of patient satisfaction on the healthcare industry bottom-line has taken on new priority. The connection between employee engagement and patient experience also continues to emerge. Surveying patients after discharge is big business and there are multiple vendors available to provide HCAHPS and other additional customized questions sets for facilities of all sizes.
The emergency department often is a patient’s first encounter with a hospital. This poses a unique opportunity for departments to get the patient’s experience off to the right start.
As leaders of these departments, we must never forget that small things do matter and that a patient’s experience is the sum of all their experiences and interactions. In this article, we are going to share two different strategies to understand the voice of your patients and employees that visit and work in your emergency department.
Nurses have an immense opportunity to impact the patient experience. Being in contact with the patient more than any other caregiver gives nurses the unique advantage to impact a patient's hospital experience. As hospital administrators and nurse leaders we have the responsibility to outfit our front-line staff with the tools to provide excellent service, empathetic connection, and high quality care.
For any of us who have had a loved one hospitalized for any length of time, the stresses of not being able to be at their side can be overwhelming. That feeling is magnified when that loved one is miles or states away. The Nobl Rounding Platform features a friends and family portal, designed to provide quick, secure and real-time updates to family members anywhere with access to the web. The feature also gives family members a chance to share their feedback about the software and the nursing care provided.
The little things that go above and beyond the basic behaviors to create a “personal” experience or “wow” for each patient are important. These small but significant actions can make a big difference in patients’ perceptions of each encounter with a care provider. Individual staff members don’t have to wait for the whole facility to launch one of the best practices, they can create a change one provider and one patient/family at a time. Choose one new thing to implement each month.
Nurses spend an average of 10,000 minutes per month responding to call lights because they are frequently called into patient rooms for position adjustment, toileting assistance, and to ease pain. A patient-centric rounding tool will increase patient experience in your organization by proactively anticipating patient needs. A nurse rounding tool can save you time with automatic data aggregation and reports, workflow gains, and streamline communication.
Rounding with patients can often lead to concerns that must be resolved by different departments. Service recovery is efficient with a tool that can quickly communicate with other departments.
Music has long been considered a therapy to help behavioral and mental health patients cope with challenges and ease stress. As healthcare continues to makes strides in improving the experience for all patients, clinicians are finding that music can benefit a variety of patient populations in both inpatient and outpatient facilities.
Patients undergoing a conscious treatment or procedure can benefit greatly from listening to soothing music; helping them relax and decrease muscle tension. This helps reduce a patient’s pain by shifting their focus and lowering anxiety.
