The Importance of Patient Experience Surveys in Healthcare
Discuss about the Radiation Therapy Patient Experience Survey.
In most cases, nurses are always concerned with following or adhering to various clinical protocols without considering if the patients are comfortable with the form of care or not. Nurses subject the patients to various forms of medication without considering the feeling or views of the patients (Lee et al., 2017, p. 55). Besides, nurses also dwell on the law and ethical principles of nursing.
This therefore necessitated me as a nursing care manager to come up with a way in which patients can also express themselves through the use of patient’s surveys. I am planning to introduce this service to the clinical setting and am planning to use the best nursing leadership possible.
Apparently, there is need for rigorous ways apart from clinical conversations to get the patients view on different issues like as well as the quality of care they get. In Germany for example, it has been mandatory since 2005 to estimate or rather measure the satisfaction of the patients which forms part of the quality management report. In the United States of America on the other hand, the Department of Health did launch the nationwide survey program in 2002 whereby all the NHS are supposed to carry out a survey on patients satisfaction on an annual basis and submit the results to their respective regulators. This is therefore to imply that estimation of patient satisfaction is a true indicator towards improvement on the services as well as the strategic goals in all healthcare institutions.
In this assignment, a close insight on the importance of the patients experience surveys, their implementation, the barriers to implementation and the best leadership style to be used will be analyzed.
In our today’s society, healthcare is a very important aspect and there should always be constant efforts from all the relevant stakeholders to persistently monitor on the quality of the healthcare services that patients are subjected to so as to get a feedback on the areas that need improvement as well as innovation (Mendonca, Abel, Saunders, Wardle, & Lyratzopoulos, 2015, p. 482). The primary objective with this efforts is to improve on the current healthcare standards.
To be able to achieve this important objective, it is necessary to utilize different tools like patient experience surveys. The response from patients will would give information to the level or kind of services that they go through when in hospitals and other medical facilities (Saunders, Elliott, Lyratzopoulos, & Abel, 2016, p. 48). This surveys could be conducted on a daily basis to get a clear response.
Barriers to Change in the Implementation of Patient Experience Surveys
To effectively understand the needs of the patients as well as their experiences, Medicare came up with this Patients Satisfaction Survey Program. According to the Sentinel article that was published in British Medical Journal in the year 1999, there was increasing concern for the need of patients experience survey as the paper did predict that the surveys would in return improve the healthcare delivery (Poulose et al., 2014, p. 19).The need for patients experience surveys is further necessitated by the fact that the healthcare sector is currently shifting its focus from paying for services towards valuing performance as well as outcomes. In simpler terms, the core function of the patient experience survey is to give a feedback on the experience at the healthcare facility. The response can be either positive or negative and it is just to form a basis upon which future decisions can be made.
Change is usually a necessary process since it serves well to both the hospital and its staff. However, change is at times met with a lot of resistance. This is because it is usually traumatizing to say goodbye to the old fashioned ways that majority of the staff are accustomed to when handling different aspects. There are different barriers to change especially in the hospital set up (Blanco-Portela, Benayas, Pertierra, & Lozano, 2017, p. 570). To effectively overcome this barriers however, good leadership has to be at interplay and in this case it would be participative leadership which involves accommodating everyone’s view as well as allowing every member of the hospital to be part of the change process.
Lack of employee Involvement is one of the leading barriers to change. In most of the hospitals, majority of the healthcare workers are always afraid of change since most of them have that perception that change could affect them negatively (Counselor Education and Supervision, 2018, p. 18). This negative attitude to change according to most studies, has been narrowed down to lack of the employee involvement in the change process. This is the biggest mistake that most hospitals make as they seek for transition. In most cases it is the top brass who gets the information or involved in the process. As a result, other employees feel maligned from the process and end up feeling that the change process is just a way to push them away.
It is therefore necessary as nursing care manager for my case to ensure that as I seek to implement this change of patients experience survey, I have to involve all the employees in the hospital. Involvement in this case involves listening to the opinion of each of the employees and providing necessary resources needed for change. With employee involvement, majority of them will be ready as well as comfortable to take in the new changes in the hospital.
Overcoming Barriers to Change with Participative Leadership
Another barrier to change is improper communication strategy. Majority of the Hospitals lack an effective way of communicating. This is however not limited to hospitals but other organizations in general (Shackleton, Le Maître, Van Wilgen, & Richardson, 2016, p. 186). Most of the top management sit behind closed doors and decide upon any change and assume that once it is communicated to other staff, they would readily take in the new developments. This has however according to many studies indicated that it has resulted to a lot of resistance. As a nurse care manager therefore, I would avoid this barrier of just announcing and introducing change by communicating effectively to all employees on how the change will affect them and how they can adapt to the said changes of the patients experience surveys.
Clinical complexity can as well be a barrier to implementing changes. There are moments when the hospital come up with very complex process on how to plan and implement certain changes. The complexity nature of the process in return discourages most of the employees in the hospital who shy off from the changes (“Editorial Board,” 2018, p. 2). With this barrier, I would overcome it by utilizing a keen and skillful way of tackling the complexity nature of introducing the patient experience surveys. I would achieve this by offering the survey forms on a daily basis to any patient prior to discharge so that it does not compromise with any due process in the hospital.
Another potential barrier to change is unfamiliar current state. It is usually difficult for hospital staffs shifting from the old and familiar ways of doing things to a new and unfamiliar routine which most of them are unaware of the harm that it comes with it (“Lewin’s Microtheories,” n.d., p. 121). As a nurse care manager, I ought to utilize the participative nursing leadership by sharing with them the benefits of the proposed changes so that they can anticipate for the change.
A bad culture in the shift of planning is also a barrier to change. In most cases, many leaders don’t take into perspective the general effects of change in that they only concentrate on administrative structures and job responsibilities. They fail to utilize the participative leadership to seek information on the impact the change will have on feelings as well as intuitions of the affected parties. I would break this barrier by ensuring that I get the opinion of all the affected parties on how the change will affect their feelings and intuitions. In all these barriers, the solution lies with utilizing the best leadership method as a nurse and this is the participative leadership. Feeling recognized always acts as a motivation.
Conclusion
Conclusion
With the shifting of the fee for services attitude towards patient’s satisfaction, certain changes ought to be in the pipeline. One such significant change is implementation of the patients experience surveys. It has widely been known that nurses are only concentrated on the protocols of patients care as well as treatment but fail to get the feedback on areas patients feel should be improved on. This form of miscommunication has in return created a wide gap between the nurses and the patients in terms of service delivery. The patients experience survey will therefore reduce this gaps though it is likely to be met with different obstacles during implementation. Some of the barriers include ineffective communication, unknown current state, Hospital complexity and a bad culture to shift planning. This barriers need a good leadership style to overcome. The best leadership in this case is participative leadership where everybody is given the chance to express or rather share their opinions.
References
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(2018). Counselor Education and Supervision, 57(1). doi:10.1002/ceas.2018.57.issue-1
Editorial Board. (2018). Human Resource Management Review, 28(2), ii. doi:10.1016/s1053-4822(18)30104-9
Lee, G., Dinniwell, R., Fyles, A., Conrad, T., Han, K., Levin, W., … Koch, A. (2017). Radiation Therapy Patient Experience Survey of Early-Stage Breast Cancer Women. Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, 48(1), S5-S6. doi:10.1016/j.jmir.2017.02.018
Lewin’s Microtheories. (n.d.). Planned Change Theories for Nursing: Review, Analysis, and Implications, 117-128. doi:10.4135/9781452232935.n10
Mendonca, S., Abel, G., Saunders, C., Wardle, J., & Lyratzopoulos, G. (2015). Pre-referral general practitioner consultations and subsequent experience of cancer care: evidence from the English Cancer Patient Experience Survey. European Journal of Cancer Care, 25(3), 478-490. doi:10.1111/ecc.12353
Poulose, S., Cheriyan, E., Poulose, A., Cheriyan, R., Vadakkanezath, B., & Ziemer, P. (2014). Usefulness of the NC-stat DPNCheck nerve conduction test in a community pharmacy as an educational tool for patients with diabetes. Canadian Pharmacists Journal / Revue des Pharmaciens du Canada, 148(1), 17-20. doi:10.1177/1715163514561055
Saunders, C. L., Elliott, M. N., Lyratzopoulos, G., & Abel, G. A. (2016). Do Differential Response Rates to Patient Surveys Between Organizations Lead to Unfair Performance Comparisons? Medical Care, 54(1), 45-54. doi:10.1097/mlr.0000000000000457
Shackleton, R. T., Le Maitre, D. C., Van Wilgen, B. W., & Richardson, D. M. (2015). Use of non-timber forest products from invasive alien Prosopis species (mesquite) and native trees in South Africa: implications for management. Forest Ecosystems, 2(1). doi:10.1186/s40663-015-0040-9
Shackleton, R. T., Le Maitre, D. C., Van Wilgen, B. W., & Richardson, D. M. (2016). Identifying barriers to effective management of widespread invasive alien trees: Prosopis species (mesquite) in South Africa as a case study. Global Environmental Change, 38, 183-194. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.03.012
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