customer satisfaction in the er

Specialties Emergency

Published

I have been an ER nurse for 22 years now and this has to be one of the hardest parts of my job, customer satisfaction and Press Ganey. I work in an ED that sees 135 patients daily with the highest volumne during my shift 7p-7a. The problem I am having as well as many of my co-workers is that the hospital has decided for the last two years to use the Press Ganey survey company to evaluate our hospital. That in its self isn't much of a problem but when they start staying on us to the point it is interfering with our jobs it gets to be quite a head ache.

We as an ER have an average wait time of 2 hours or so. I think that is very good considing there are only 5 nurses on each shift . We have 2 doctors during peak times with a fast track open on weekends for even higher volumne.

My question is if anyone else has similiar problems keeping patients happy while still covering the TRUE emergencies. Even when I have a great day and don't let anyone fluster me I still can't seem to make the majority of patients happy. They get mad about the wait time, the lab wait time, the doctor attitude and the list goes on. Has any one out there got any ideas that I can take back to my ED customer satisfaction comittee to improve our scores. This is getting so old and it definitely takes the little bit of fun out of a very demanding job.

Thanks for any help any one can provide.

you know..i don't know why we are killing ourselves over "customer satisfaction" in the er.

people come in to the er at one of the worst moments in their lives. we step in and "do our thing" while our patients and their families are stressed beyond their capacity to cope. we are NEVER going to satisfy them.

our hospital also uses press-ganey. and our scores are up there for the most part. but if we think we can make them all happy little campers...forget it. they cannot control whatever emergency is happening in their life but they can certainly try to control you.

i think our scores are up because of the same bulls*** we have been talking about...tvs in the exam rooms...extra ancillary staff to bring around food and drinks...coloring books for kiddies...and on...and on...none of it has to do with nursing...

so don't kill yourself or each other. make your administration provide what they think is "necessary" for press-ganey and focus on not killing anyone during your shift!

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one of the problems i have found is that we think we are dealing with adults! adults in patients and adults in management. yes, they look like adults but.....

in management, you have some one, or several people, who have the job of coming up with ideas to make everyones life better? yes, the work all day brain storming for ways to do this. they have to eventually find something or it is their job! so, eventually they do. it is an idea on paper. unfortunalty, those people are not in the trenches do they just don't know. nor do they care to hear our feedback. they may say they do, but the end result is still the plan they came up with. it looks good on paper, higher ups like it , so by god you better iniciate it! that's real adult, right?!

then you have the patients. they too look like adults. but let me tell you, if johnny hurts his thumb, all human traits go out the window. he doesn't care who he steps on, who is infront of him or who is behind him. he wants treatment and he wants it NOW!!! how adult does that sound?

i think this sadly is normal human behaviour and unfortunatly the nature of the beast. i stand by my earlier post and say that i think you can't change this and can only do what you can do. when in rome..... it does help to do it with a smile, take NOTHING personal and when you get home, forget your last 12 hours. and when mrs. press and mr gainey come to your fine establishement and cut you all up, just remember another post from the restaurant thread...... "c" say that they too will get sick! :p

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one of the problems i have found is that we think we are dealing with adults! adults in patients and adults in management. yes, they look like adults but.....

in management, you have some one, or several people, who have the job of coming up with ideas to make everyones life better? yes, the work all day brain storming for ways to do this. they have to eventually find something or it is their job! so, eventually they do. it is an idea on paper. unfortunalty, those people are not in the trenches do they just don't know. nor do they care to hear our feedback. they may say they do, but the end result is still the plan they came up with. it looks good on paper, higher ups like it , so by god you better iniciate it! that's real adult, right?!

then you have the patients. they too look like adults. but let me tell you, if johnny hurts his thumb, all human traits go out the window. he doesn't care who he steps on, who is infront of him or who is behind him. he wants treatment and he wants it NOW!!! how adult does that sound?

i think this sadly is normal human behaviour and unfortunatly the nature of the beast. i stand by my earlier post and say that i think you can't change this and can only do what you can do. when in rome..... it does help to do it with a smile, take NOTHING personal and when you get home, forget your last 12 hours. and when mrs. press and mr gainey come to your fine establishement and cut you all up, just remember another post from the restaurant thread...... "c" say that they too will get sick! :p

amen my friend...

c'mon little press and ganey...

come into my er...

look...i'm smiling...

i'll take care of you...

:angryfire :angryfire

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Our "latest and greatest" customer satisfaction campaign is called, "No One Gets the Point." Upper management has decided that no one will be directed to anywhere in the hospital...they will be escorted. So...if anyone asks me where the soda machines are, no matter how busy I am, no matter how many patients are waiting, no matter what, I am supposed to ESCORT them to the soda machines. We are no longer allowed to say, "Go down this hall, take the first right, and there they are." Nice idea, I guess, but not very realistic...I wonder how long it will last. I don't think that some of the people in the offices understand or remember what it is like to work the floors...I don't think they remember or believe that people will walk into a room while we are coding a patient to ask where the gift shop is or if we can get their kid a sticker...sigh.

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Our "latest and greatest" customer satisfaction campaign is called, "No One Gets the Point." Upper management has decided that no one will be directed to anywhere in the hospital...they will be escorted. So...if anyone asks me where the soda machines are, no matter how busy I am, no matter how many patients are waiting, no matter what, I am supposed to ESCORT them to the soda machines. We are no longer allowed to say, "Go down this hall, take the first right, and there they are." Nice idea, I guess, but not very realistic...I wonder how long it will last. I don't think that some of the people in the offices understand or remember what it is like to work the floors...I don't think they remember or believe that people will walk into a room while we are coding a patient to ask where the gift shop is or if we can get their kid a sticker...sigh.

just wait until one them or their loved ones comes in and you have to stop helping them to escort someone someplace...wonder how long that would last then?!!?

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Be careful giving patients extended wait times, it can be strude as an EMTALA violiaton if you give a patient a reason to seek delay medical care

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Be careful giving patients extended wait times, it can be strude as an EMTALA violiaton if you give a patient a reason to seek delay medical care

Ahhhhh....EMTALA...yet one more beurocrat stopping natural selection and a thinning of the gene pool!!!!!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

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Specializes in Emergency Room/corrections.

EMTALA falls right in there with HIPAA, right RN??? :rotfl: :rotfl:

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EMTALA falls right in there with HIPAA, right RN??? :rotfl: :rotfl:

HIPAA...who WANTS someones medical information anyway!???!!

:uhoh3: :uhoh3: :uhoh3:

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I know this is a late response to your issue with customer satisfaction in the E.R., but...speaking from a hospital E.R. that recently scored 93.7% on customer satisfaction (one of the top 10 hospital er's in the nation) (yeah right) ANYWAY-- the nurses were all rewarded and there was a write up in the local paper regarding our accomplishment; who the hell knows why or how we got it, but we did. We too see about the same number of patients (more somedays and less on others) BUT our staffing is much different, we start out with 7 nurses at 7 am and at 11 am on Friday, Sat., Sun., and Monday we get 2 more nurses (on Tues., Wed., and Thurs. we only grow by 1 nurse), then at 1pm we get 2 more nurses (on Tues., Wed., and Thurs. we only grow by 1 nurse) these nurses also work 12 hours so they are there until 11pm and 1am. This helps the 7p's out as well as us during peak hours. Our 7p shift starts with 7 on F,S,S, and Mondays. Our MD's also had to bulk up their staff too. On F,S,S,and Monday their schedule is as follows

MD at 8a-4p m-f--this MD stays till 6pm on Sat and Sun.

MD at 12n-11p on Sat, and Sun.

MD at 2p-12MN

MD at 11p-8a

and there is always a PA/NP (one or the other not both) on duty.

this helps with waiting times.

Now about Attitude.... a whole other story. We still piss and moan.

Our patients still have to wait, typically not as long. It sounds to me like you guys need to look at the whole problem not just nursing, there is a way to keep patients happy. we still have unhappy patients, but you usually know them prior to D/C.

I gues my point is your Management Staff / Doc's need to become proactive, if you guys are seeing that size patient load then put the nurses and doc's in there to care for them.

we had a 33 y/o white male patient check in w/ chest pain at 05:33 am, dead in 14 minutes from check in...2 hour wait times can kill people.

Good luck to you.

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oh and we were only rewarded with a free meal ticket, good in the hospital cafeteria, and Pizza bought by the CNO. Yaaay--hows that for customer satisfaction.

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oh and we were only rewarded with a free meal ticket, good in the hospital cafeteria, and Pizza bought by the CNO. Yaaay--hows that for customer satisfaction.

man...pizza...whoooeeeee

wonder what kind of bonuses the administration gave themselves?

but congrats on the good work...for real!!

:rotfl:

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