Increasing Press Gainey Scores

[karlamparo]

For those practicing in an acute care hospital, besides AIDET, hourly rounding, etc. What EBP nursing interventions do you guys do in your hospital that increases HCAHP scores?

[nrsang97, BSN, RN]

Not to be rude but did you just say 1:3 ratio is inadequate for telemetry patients? Even the California union-mandated ratios call for 1:4 or 1:5. No hospital can afford to literally double their nursing staff to give everyone that easy of an assignment. If orientees on my unit can safely take a CRRT patient on multiple pressors along with another vented patient on multiple pressors, insulin drips, etc. then you can handle more than 1:2 for telemetry patients. And I am completely in favor of eliminating nurses eating their young/inter-nurse fighting, promoting safe staffing ratios, etc.

On the subject of Press Gainey and other surveys, I could care less. I provide good care to patients, am respectful to family, am always willing to explain things/provide education, so on. If a patient has unreasonable requests I will inform them how and why their request is unreasonable in a calm manner If they somehow still give me a bad survey I don't even give it a first thought, let alone a second. If management wants to slap me on the wrist I could care less. I've worked the floor, ED, trauma ICU, and have seen tons of hissy fits to me and my colleagues. Never have I seen an actual nurse punished for it.

Management can worry about their Press Gainey scores, I don't care.

I agree with you on the tele patient thing. Our tele nurses sometimes carry 6-7 patients at times. Our nurses would love a ratio of 3-4. Even our IMC nurses carry a ratio of 3-5 patients. Their max should be 3.

[dec2007]

Great news for administrators wondering what to do about the ever present patient satisfaction question!! There is actually RESEARCH out there that shows how patient satisfaction measures cause HARM and increase bad outcomes! Patient satisfaction linked to higher health-care expenses and mortality

The Problem With Satisfied Patients - The Atlantic

The cost of satisfaction: a national study of patient satisfaction, health care utilization, expenditures, and mortality. - PubMed - NCBI

Want to know the secret to what DOES increase patient satisfaction?? MORE NURSES. Shocking, I know.

I copied that Atlantic article and left copies everywhere in my floor. They all mysteriously disappeared by the next morning.

[dec2007]

The reality is that EBP nursing interventions get a lot of administrative lip service, but what they REALLY care about is those doggone satisfaction surveys.

[retiredmednurse]

I took that Atlantic article and sent to all the nurses that still work at the local hospital, plus 2 people in HR. One of the HR people is the chief officer for HR. I loved that article and hope more nurses and administration read it.

[quazar]

I copied that Atlantic article and left copies everywhere in my floor. They all mysteriously disappeared by the next morning.

LOL, shocking. I'm sure they were all distributed to the people who needed to see them, naturally.

[jasia52]

Thank you for posting these article links. The community hospital where I worked as a psych nurse for 13 years made great efforts to improve patient satisfaction scores using many of the interventions described in the "Atlantic" article, with only fair results (in my opinion). One unintended consequence was that by linking an annual bonus given to nursing staff (modest but much appreciated) to patient satisfaction scores, fewer and smaller bonuses were distributed and the quarterly patient satisfaction scores continued to bump along at a relatively low level (not triggering a bonus).