Measuring Patient Satisfaction With Nursing

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Outline

The definition of health encompasses the physical, mental and social factors as the standard measure. Therefore, a well-crafted universal and broadly inclusive measuring instrument is necessary for the management of healthcare services. This is because it has been noted that physical therapy result alone is not the best way to understand whether a patient is wholly satisfied with the services or not.

The most common instruments used to measure whether a patient is satisfied are Satisfaction with the environment (location and infrastructure), available physical activities, Doctor’s expertise satisfaction, and nurses’ services- patient satisfaction instruments. However, it has been observed that the latter is the best as patients relate more with the nurses more than any other hospital staff due to the nature of their work.

It is this instrument that would boost the morale of the nurses as they will feel like part of the hospital’s success. Patients will also feel valued when asked questions and engaged to participate in the improvement process.

It is therefore expected that the services will improve substantially, hence bringing satisfaction not only to the patients’ side but also to the staff in general and boosting the management strategies of the hospital.

Introduction

Health definition has been noted to be abstract in meaning such that measuring it quantitatively alone does not bring a complete aspect as may be needed. However, the need to get some physical, mental as well as social indices of a person’s health standards to work with in the health management systems has prompted the need to devise other methods of measuring the health status of individuals. It is its unquantifiable nature and the absolute need that makes the choice of measurement instrument different from other forms of physical measurements a mandatory phenomenon (Bethel& Ridder, 1994). That is to say that measuring health requires three- dimensional rather than two- dimensional approach. While physical measurement of patient satisfaction would be required to get the patients improved physical health status, which would, in turn, prove the success of the applied physical therapy, the overall patient satisfaction would be necessary to gauge the overall rating of the services the patient received from the health facility. This is because more hospitals and health facilities are required to show their commitments to ensuring that the patients get satisfied by their services and to meet the minimum levels of standard satisfaction set by the standard-setting organizations that use such indicators as the source of measuring the quality of healthcare (Gonzalez et al, 2005).

Physical therapy results Vs Patient satisfaction

The physical measurement techniques have been applied to get the physical outcome of the therapy process provided. This is done in order to diagnose, predict the possible progress, and do the evaluation after the physical therapy process. A practical example is weighing the patient after some treatments or testing a patient’s body fluid before and after the therapy or treatment. However, healthcare institutions are continuously facing challenges in the competitive health sector over the need to satisfy their customers’ demand especially on the services provided and how those services are provided.

It has been consequently realized that measuring a patient’s satisfaction takes more than the physical outcome after the treatment. To get the actual outcome a health practitioner will need the patients’ response in terms of physical and attitudinal.

Patients nowadays no longer respond to the physical results of their treatment alone but consider more the general care given by physicians and nurses or provided by a particular health facility. It was found that patients who reportedly gave positive feedback from a particular health facility are more likely to go back for more services at the same health facility or hospital and are likely to follow strictly the treatment plans that have been recommended (Caotes & Jarratt, 1990)

Patient satisfaction and Healthcare performance

For informed decisions that would improve the strategic management to be made in an organization, a well-crafted performance indicator is necessary for any institution, leave alone the health institutions. This is because the health sector has become very competitive and therefore the establishment of new and well-informed healthcare practices is indispensable (Nelson et al, 1991). This would require evaluation criteria that will entail financial analysis, clinical outcome, and patient satisfaction as one package.

Measuring instruments

Different hospitals have applied several methods to measure patient satisfaction. They are; patient satisfaction with the environment of the hospital: The patients are asked whether they are fully satisfied with the environment of the hospital (location), available infrastructure, and other physical facilities like availability of packing space; nursing services: the response from patients as regards nurses performance and conduct, i.e. how they relate to patients and hospital clients; doctors’ performances: Just like nurses, doctors are evaluated from the views presented by the patients and hospital clients. However, the patients may give a biased opinion because they would always rate the doctors on their technical know-how rather than how they relate as in the case with opinions on nurses. Measuring the level of satisfaction cannot be effectively handled by the use of customer view of the environment and location of the hospital, the physical services (medical diagnosis and treatment), staff- staff relations, and or patients’ physical health outcome for they are not likely to bring in the patient-centered results that encompass the quality of their health and satisfaction level of the services offered (Sewitch & Grant, 2004).

Patient satisfaction with nursing services

The patient-nurse relationship is the measuring instrument that has been found to be more cost-effective and patient-friendly. They include assessing the actions of the nurses when delivering health services to the patient. It is done by evaluating the quality of the services offered by the nurses through the patients’ perspectives. This is due to the fact that most of the transactions in the hospital setting between the patients in the hospital staff normally occur between the hospital nurses and the patients themselves. It, therefore, makes sense that the measuring instrument should be the perception of the patients towards the nurses who would have to interact with the patient and other clients on their day-to-day activities.

This approach has several advantages since the participating patients would develop a feeling that the hospital value them much and this is likely to eliminate some of the stress-related illness that comes with a long period of hospitalization. They will also understand their role as patients in terms of improving the services of the hospital, hence helping the hospital administration understands the areas to improve on their perspectives as clients (Wagner et al, 2001). Once effective data is collected and analyzed, the hospital administration would be able to improve the patients’ satisfaction in a quantifiable manner. This will enhance the organization’s ability to compete effectively and successfully in the health care industry. Moreover, they are able to improve the performance of the regular staff like nurses hence boosting performance. The nurses are also likely to learn the quantitative and qualitative indicators for healthcare perceptions from the patients’ perspective. This will help them learn the use of information to track trends and problem analysis criteria (Li et al, 2003).

Conclusion

The model of care that looks into the performance towards the satisfaction of the client will help improve strategies that would be able to monitor the clients’ response in terms of services offered and how they are provided. This will satisfy both the health provider, the family of the patient, and the patient.

References

Caotes, J. & Jarratt, J. (1990). Future work, San Francisco, Jossey- Bass.
Bethel, S. & Ridder, J. (1994). Evaluating nursing practices: satisfaction at what cost? Nursing Management, 25 (9), 41- 43, 46-48.
Nelson, E., Larson, C., Davies, A. & Ware, J. (1991). The patient comment card: Assessment to gather customer feedback. Quality Review Bulletin, 17 (9), 278-286.
Gonzalez, J., Quintana, A., Bilbao, A. & Escobar, F. (2005). Development and validation of an in-patient satisfaction questionnaire Int. J. Qual. Health Care; 17(6): 465 – 472.
Li, H., Wang M. & Shen, Y. (2003). Chinese SF-36 Health Survey: translation, cultural adaptation, validation, and normalization. Journal of Epidemiology Community Health; 57(4): 259 – 263.
Wagner, G., van der Wal, P., Groenewegen, P. & Bakker D. (2001). The effectiveness of quality systems in nursing homes: a review Qual. Saf. Health Care; 10(4): 211 – 217.
Christopher M. Oermann, M, Paul R., Swank, P., & Marianna M. (2008). Validation of an Instrument Measuring Patient Satisfaction with Chest Physiotherapy Techniques in Cystic Fibrosis. In H.L
Sewitch, J. & Grant, B. (2004). Physiological evidence of Patient satisfaction Action Plan. American Psychologist, 48, 1141-1147.

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