Patient Satisfaction
High Patient Satisfaction Scores Are Within Your Reach
…and it’s a natural result of hardwiring a daily “wow moment” for each patient.
HCAHPS scores are driven by “top box” positive responses, but it’s hard to impress every patient every day. In addition, asking stressed-out nurses to also be “customer service agents” isn’t the best approach.
What if there was a trick to hardwire a daily “wow moment” for each patient, and what if that trick also made nursing handoff more efficient and safe?
Structured Bedside Handover creates that daily “wow moment.” We do it because it’s better for nurses and safer for patients, but it also boosts HCAHPS scores for nursing communication.
When Every Nursing Handover is a “Wow Moment,” Patients Notice.
A Structured Bedside Handover gives patients what they want: Clarity, thoroughness, and empowerment. It’s unfair that we nurses already do all that but we often don’t get credit for it.
A warm, super-professional handover helps us get credit in the eyes of patients for all the things we’re already doing, and for nurses, that overdue recognition feels rewarding.
Structured Bedside Handover Creates That Daily “Wow Moment.”
For example, look at what happened in 2019 when a med-surg unit at a Southwestern US hospital implemented our Nurses First™ program.
Before the program, scores for “Nursing Communication” and “Rate the Hospital” were in the low single-digit percentiles, but after achieving Bedside Handover Excellence, they saw HCAHPS scores jump to the 81st and 89th percentiles:
Schedule a briefing to learn how to boost patient satisfaction scores on your units.
There’s great power in beginnings.
Change the first 20 minutes of each shift,
and you change the culture of your unit
Team Huddle
Our nurses didn’t feel like a team and started each shift more like a group of individuals running around. So we began a Change of Shift Huddle which takes 3 minutes. The off-going charge nurse reads through a standard form to the oncoming shift. It’s the most professional, efficient team meeting you’ll see anywhere in the hospital and starts with a 1-page form. You can use ours. Tens of thousands of nursing shifts have used it.
Bedside Handover
As nurses, we dread getting bad handoff. When there’s no structure, each nurse gives report their own way and it feels less safe and more stressful.
So our units decided to standardize each bedside handover. The heart of our handover is a structured, single-page shift report form using an ISBAR framework, Review of Systems outline, and it’s customized for the unit. It’s presented top to bottom by the outgoing nurse, then handed over with our patient.
Safety and Quality
The assurance of quality and safety is the single most significant responsibility of leaders in healthcare delivery. It’s a cornerstone of our careers.
The hand-off process is pivotal to patient safety. Many breaches of patient safety occur around change-of-shift. Most hospitals have adopted some level of bedside handover by now, but telling nurses to give report at the bedside doesn’t reduce unnecessary variation. Every nurse has their own way of giving report and nursing handover is typically inconsistent and unstructured.
Patient Satisfaction
High patient satisfaction scores are achievable and it’s a natural result of hardwiring a daily “wow moment” for each patient.
HCAHPS scores are driven by “top box” positive responses, but it’s hard to impress every patient every day. Asking stressed-out nurses to also be “customer service agents” isn’t the best approach.
Nurse Engagement
We’re living in a new era. Hospital nursing is more complex than ever and 50% of bedside nurses now say they’re burnt out. Turnover rates are spiking. Nurses choose hospitals that find meaningful ways to care for them, and we leave the ones that don’t. They prefer hospitals that:
-Reduce stress
-Help them get familiar with patients as quickly as possible
-Reduce unnecessary variation in communication
-Make them feel part of a high-performing team
-Have a collaborative work culture