"You are getting very good care"

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Management at our hospital wants us to constantly tell the patients that we are giving them "very good care, very good care, we hope that we are giving you very good care". One of my relatives just got out of the hospital in a different state and he said that the hospital staff there were chanting this mantra too. It drove him crazy; he thought they were trying to hypnotize him. My question is, Do you think this has a good effect on patients and families? That is, if the staff tells them all the time they are trying to give them very good care, do you think that raises the Press Ganey scores, or do you think that the majority of the public thinks this is strange?

Specializes in L & D; Postpartum.

How can we, as nurses, give feedback to the morons making these decisions? Robots is what they would like to have, and patients will, indeed, start to wonder if that's what their nurses are.

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Well, as I have said approximately one million times before, PATIENT CARE IS NOT CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!! To try to apply CS to the healthcare industry is ridiculous. Our bosses want us to say "very good" because if the pt gets a survey, that's what they will see as being the highest rating. Our bosses think that if the pts hear us say it enough, it will make them mark it on their survey. So everything is "very good". Kiss my butt, it is not! Sorry for the language, but I'm totally fed up with freakin' customer service in the hospital. Yes, pts have the right to appropriate, safe care in a timely manner. And I would have a lot more time to provide this if i wasn't constantly having to hear complaints about the time your MRI will happen and why you don't like the food, and that you think the cleaner that the housekeeper uses smells bad, and that you don't like the wallpaper (to name a few recent ones).

What I love is that we are getting more and more responsibility dumped on us becasue nobody else wants to do it. We are also held responsible for our overall P-G score, even though most of it has nothing to do with us. On our unit, the lowest our nursing has had in a long while is 97, but our overall scores are like 42. Why? Because pts don't like our hospitalists (they were 4 last time, 1 the time before that), they think they had to wait too long for admission from the ER (we usually get around 20 on that one), they had to wait too long for their CT (17) or didn't feel they were kept informed about the timing of their tests/procedures (12). And what are we supposed to do about that? I can't make the doctors tell the pts what time they will come. I can't make rooms available any faster so they can get admitted. I can't do their CT, and I can't tell them when it's going to be because I don't know. It's a Level II trauma center - sometimes emergencies come in. Yes I KNOW it's frustrating for the pts, but it just makes the nurses job a LOT harder to have to deal with all this stuff!!!!

Sheesh, there I go again! Lol! :spbox:

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Yep the P-G people are making tons of money off of these hospitals that are trying to be hotels for people. And all it is- you get what you pay for. they are trying to make up for the prices of crap like fifty bucks everytime your o2 sat is taken and thirteen dollars for the tylenol your given. It all comes down to the price of health care which is ridiculous. So they feel if we make them happier maybe it won't be so much a kick in the ass when you get the bill.

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

:rotfl::kiss

:lol2:

I can only hope they noted that on their return survey.

Ya know, they could have saved the money spent on consultants by using a few tried and true catch-phrases...

We'll leave the light on for you!

YAY Pepto-Bismol!

You're in good hands, with [insert name of hospital]!

Resistance is futile!

Obey your thirst!

Palmolive? You're soaking in it!

Tell me what you don't like about yourself...

This is your brain on drugs.

No soup for you!

Oh, my God! They killed Kenny!

Your doctor said Mylanta, dammit!

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Specializes in NICU.
Management at our hospital wants us to constantly tell the patients that we are giving them "very good care, very good care, we hope that we are giving you very good care".

That is creepy as hell.

Now, we run overboard on our Family Centered Care sometimes (visiting restrictions in an ICU? Bah! Making families observe isolation precautions? Surely you jest!), but thank GOD we haven't had to script yet. We do PG, and they post some of them in the breakroom, but everyone just rolls their eyes, basically. We're top-10 nationally ranked, which gives me a giggle, but at least it means management feels a little more secure in themselves and doesn't subject us to crap like this.

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Yeah, we won some PG award last year, we're fortune top 100 to work for (lol, I'd hate to see the places that didn't make the list), we're magnet, all that jazz, so they are super focused on al that crap. We're a big system with some major competition in the area, so they want as many stupid, meaningless titles as possible. We're supposed to use scripting, but I hate doing that. The patients and families are always like "who told you to say that?"...it just doesn't work. Sometimes I tweak some of the scripted stuff and say it my way, if it's important information for pts/families. But I refuse to memorize lines. I mean, come on!! Soon they'll be expecting me to do my own stunts!

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There are some circumstances that this phrase would be completely and utterly out of line. They need to allow nurses to use their brains here. I also find it completely insulting to a patient's intelligence.

I wonder if a question on the survery will be:

Did the nurses tell you you were getting very, very, very good care?

I wouldn't put it past them. lol

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"Very good" is such a B-rated phrase to me. The following adjectives sound better in my opinion, although I'd never say them to a patient, because most patients are astute enough to decide for themselves about the quality of care being provided.

1. "You are getting superior care."

2. "You are getting outstanding care."

3. "You are getting excellent care."

4. "You are getting the best care."

5. "You are getting premium care."

6. "You are getting not too shabby care."

7. "You are getting purty dang good care."

8. "You are getting extreme mega care."

9. "You are getting the best care that short-staffing, rediculous mgmt, and poor working conditions will allow."

:twocents::bugeyes:

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and of course, the ever appropriate: " you will respect mah authoritay." (carter)

hahahahahahaha.

i need to try that one.

leslie

The DON that fired me actually DID say that to me, I retorted, "you just fired me, you don't pay me to pretend to respect you anymore.":D
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The DON that fired me actually DID say that to me, I retorted, "you just fired me, you don't pay me to pretend to respect you anymore.":D

I really admire you for saying that. You rock!

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The DON that fired me actually DID say that to me, I retorted, "you just fired me, you don't pay me to pretend to respect you anymore.":D

I would have loved to have been a fly on that DON's wall when you said that.:yeah:

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How can we, as nurses, give feedback to the morons making these decisions? Robots is what they would like to have, and patients will, indeed, start to wonder if that's what their nurses are.

Here is their website. http://www.pressganey.com/cs/contact_us

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