Celebrating Nurses’ Monumental Impact
There is a myriad of ways to participate in National Nurses Week, which is celebrated May 6-12, from honoring your staff RNs with a gift or event to taking steps to let...
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By: Jared Bilski
Published: 9/11/2019
The winner of this year's OR Excellence Award for Patient Satisfaction goes to great lengths to get patients to fill out their post-op surveys and even greater lengths to implement the suggestions those patients have.
"If we don't get feedback from our patients, how are we going to know where we need to improve?" asks Nikki Williams, RN, CNOR, the OR director at Lakeland (Fla.) Surgical & Diagnostic Center.
The facility recently started giving an extra incentive for patients to fill out the all-important survey. Inside of post-op thank you cards, Lakeland includes a note letting patients know that if they simply fill out the survey, they'll automatically be entered into a drawing to win a $50 gift card. "We saw a nice little boost right after we added the raffle," says Ms. Williams.
Of course, getting patients to respond to satisfaction surveys is only one part of the equation. You still need to receive high marks on every aspect of the care you provide. Here are some of the personal touches that make Lakeland one of this year's award-winning facilities.
But patients aren't the only ones who benefit from the use of aromatherapy. In the busy GI unit, there's an aromatherapy machine at the nurses' station that dispenses a calming lavender scent. The logic behind the staff-centered aromatherapy: The calmer the staff, the more satisfied the patients.
The goal, of course, is to prevent negative comments in the first place. That's easier said than done — especially in those situations where impatient patients' procedures are delayed, and they're asked to wait for longer-than-expected stretches of time. Lakeland's staff is able to reduce patients' frustration simply by suggesting they watch something on the facility-provided iPads, a patient-satisfier that's mainly used for children but is available for everyone. In other cases, the staff takes a preemptive approach. When patients appear a bit antsy, Lakeland staff will approach the patient before the patient approaches them and present gift cards for local area restaurants. "We'll go up to the patient and say, "Look I'm sorry you've waited so long. Here's a gift card for you guys to have a meal on us,'" says Ms. Williams. Lakeland generally gives out around 4 or 5 gift cards per month for a variety of reasons, and Ms. Williams says it's helped to minimize any negative responses on the facility's patient surveys.
After surgery, every patient receives a hand-written card from the entire staff at Lakeland. Each department gets his or her entire staff to sign the cards, so patients will routinely get cards with signatures in the double-digits. "It's something our patients definitely appreciate," says Ms. Williams. "A large amount of our surveys include comments from patients saying how much they liked the personal touch of the thank-you cards."
If you're looking for ways to ramp up your own facility's patient satisfaction efforts, Ms. Williams can't stress the importance of the survey enough. As she puts it, the patient satisfaction survey is a proven way to "see the care you provided through the patients' eyes." And based on Lakeland's survey scores and patients' comments, the view is pretty good. OSM
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