Posting results of patient satisfaction surveys w/ negative comments and nurse's name

[Pally]

Our agency has announced that it will be posting the results of the patient satisfaction surveys and they will be posting the names of employees identified by patients in the survey. Some of the comments related to employees will be positive, but some will be negative. The rationale is that peer pressure will help the employee who rec'd negative comments improve so that they do not get their name in negative print again! Any thoughts? I think this is old thinking and a great way to tick employees off. An unhappy employee gets back at the company in a negative way. Can you believe we are paying administrators to make these kinds of decisions? What ever happened to addressing the issue directly w/ the employee w/ the problem? And of course you are making the assumption that the patient is right and that assumption is not always right!

[JillR]

My facility posts the names and comments of the good reports. They do not post the bad comments. If a person is named in a bad comment, they will send a copy of this to the employee and request that the employee discusses this with their supervisor. I think it is a terrible thing to do this to someone (posting) because there may be reasons that others do not know about that spurred these bad comments. Maybe the family was upset with the nurse because he/she would not "watch" their child while they visited (have had that request personally). Under this condition, it would be totally appropriate to refuse that request and then the patient writes that the Rn was "rude" or something. Give me a break.

[Mijourney]

Hi Pally. As other posters have indicated, administration will use any kind of strategy to take the onus off of themselves and put onto nursing. In my opinion, they might as well not post any survey responses if the negative ones will be posted. I don't see how posting negative comments help morale. Administration can use the negative comments as a tool to help employees improve communication and care or improve the environment in which nursing is practice.

[This message has been edited by Mijourney (edited November 24, 2000).]

[OC_An Khe]

Our facility will post positive responses but not negative ones. Posting neg's is counter productive, managerment always take the patient's (customer is always right) side.They only hear one side of the story and rarely if ever listen to the RN's side. The complaints are not always legitimate, but are usally treated as they were.