Improving the Patient Experience One Behavior at a Time
Every patient has a different view on the quality of his or her interactions with the nursing staff. The different preferences can be challenging to manage as a caregiver. But there is good news. There is a way to be sure each patient gets the care needed in a nurturing environment – by providing care “that consciously adopts the patient’s perspective.” 1
Satisfaction questions have been used for decades to evaluate how happy or satisfied a patient or customer is with the services received. Each patient is asked to imagine a rating between 1 and 5 or a score from Very Satisfied to Very Unsatisfied and then apply it to part of his or her experience.
This poses a significant hurdle when it comes to improvement.
When you’re a caregiver, held accountable for improving patient satisfaction scores, here’s your challenge: How do you change the thoughts and feelings of each patient when how the patients perceive you is totally out of your control? Or think of it this way: When your unit scores 78 percent satisfaction on nurse listening, what does that tell you about how to improve?
Researchers from the Picker Institute and Harvard University conducted thousands of interviews with patients, family members and caregivers to understand the most important aspects of the patient care experience. They determined that if patient-centered care was to be improved, healthcare workers would need to be evaluated on their own behaviors and actions. This is the foundation of the NRC Picker family of surveys and the HCAHPS instrument.
Knowing we can only improve what we can control, here’s the paradigm shift from patient satisfaction measurement to patient experience measurement: NRC Picker asks patients if their healthcare team ALWAYS performed specific behaviors or actions 100 percent of the time. Behaviors and actions can be controlled when you measure for them.
In this scenario, when a unit is told only 78 percent of patients ALWAYS felt the nurses listened carefully to them, the unit has a clear understanding of what actions need to be changed. In this case, unit nurses can control specific behaviors, such as listening to patients talk about their care.
Healthcare workers have used this approach to quality improvement since the introduction of Core Measures and Six Sigma. Together, Picker and Harvard discovered what behaviors caregivers need to deliver to provide patients and their families with a truly patient-centered experience. In February 2003, AHRQ released this statement about patient experience measurement: “As indicated in the literature, patient satisfaction surveys continually yield high satisfaction rates that tend to provide little information in the way of comparisons between hospitals.”
NRC Picker measurement and improvement solutions show where you are ALWAYS delivering patient-centered care 100 percent of the time. When staff does not ALWAYS deliver patient-centered care 100 percent of the time, NRC Picker provides guidance on making behavioral changes based on your measurement results and our research-based best practices.
Take the subjectivity and emotion out of your patient experience scores using behavioral-based questions across the continuum of care. Give your staff control on how to improve the most important aspects of the patient experience using measurement and improvement solutions from NRC Picker.
1 Gertis, Margaret, Susan Edgman-Levitan, Jennifer Daley, Thomas Delbanco, eds. (1993) Through the Patient’s Eyes, Jossy-Bass, p. 5.