Using the Evidence-Based Practice Service Nursing Bundle to Increase Patient Satisfaction

Abstract

AbstractIntroductionPatient satisfaction and patient experience goals are often linked to financial consequences. Although the link does exist, the bottom line is not only about money; it’s about providing a quality experience for ED patients and creating an environment that engages staff. Evidence-based practice (EBP) strategies that have positive impact on patient perceptions of their ED care and increased satisfaction ratings include AIDET, Hourly Rounding, and Bedside Shift Report, which incorporate updates of test results and explanations of events occurring during a patient’s visit. In addition to these outcomes, Hourly Rounding and Bedside Shift Report have been linked to patient safety improvements. Combining these strategies, our team created and implemented the service nursing bundle as a quality improvement (QI) initiative, with the goal of having a positive effect on patient experiences in emergency departments, represented by at least a 5% increase in overall quality-of-care ranking and ratings. MethodsThis QI project involved comparing professional research consultant (PRC) patient- satisfaction phone survey ratings from patients before and after ED staff members completed a 1-hour service nursing bundle class. In addition to the patient-satisfaction ratings, 1,104 audits evaluating staff use of the service bundle implementation were collected over an 8-week period.reading document: ResultsThe random observational audits showed the adoption of the service nursing bundle as staff compliance started at 65% in week 1 compared with 100% by week 8. Before intervention (July 2015): 50% of patients rated their overall quality of care as excellent, yielding a benchmark ranking of 42.5 percentile. Postservice bundle education implementation (September 2015): 60% of patients rated their overall quality of care as excellent, increasing our ranking to the 85.5 percentile. The postservice bundle group was 1.5 times more likely to respond “excellent” to all 5 survey questions, which was statistically significant (z =2.82, P = 0.004). The patients’ perceptions of total time spent in the emergency department and ratings of “excellent” revealed a significant statistical difference (before: 35.0%, after: 49.5%, X2 (1) = 4.24, P < 0.05). DiscussionWith the implementation of the bundle, our emergency department experienced an 11.8% increase in the number of patients rating their overall quality of care as excellent. This upsurge resulted in a 40% increase in overall quality of care, propelling our emergency department’s ranking to the 85th percentile.Image 1