Ideas That Work: Accreditation Quiz Game Helped Us Ace Our Survey

SURVEY SAYS? The big prize came when we aced our accreditation and CMS surveys.

Accreditation Quiz Game Helped Us Ace Our Survey

Accreditation surveys are always a challenge, especially when it's tough to get staff members to focus on all the pieces they need to know. Fortunately, I've figured out a way to help us sail through them with high marks.

I had always given staff members handouts with various tips and policies when we had a survey upcoming. But it was pretty clear they weren't really reading them. Whenever the time came to actually discuss them in staff meetings, I seemed to be the only one doing any discussing.

Figuring a carrot would work better than a stick, I decided to make a constructive game out of it. I assigned everyone a partner and began asking survey-related questions from the handouts at every meeting, with each question valued at a theoretical dollar figure. Then I awarded tokens corresponding with the various dollar amounts to each pair that wrote down the correct answer. I also changed the teams every week, so no one could just depend on his or her partner to have all the right answers.

After 5 weeks, I let the top 3 teams "shop" for prizes — like gift cards, a paid day off, a half-day off, extra time for lunch and other small gifts — each valued at a specific amount.

It was well worth it. People suddenly got very interested, and not only did we get a perfect score on our most recent survey, we also aced a surprise CMS survey a short time later.

Lynn Rhea, RN, BSN
Baltimore (Md.) Ambulatory Center for Endoscopy
[email protected]