Nursing

Patient safety surveys help focus staff training

Nurse Leader Weekly, July 3, 2006

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At Citizens Medical Center (CMC) in Victoria, TX, the patient safety group has developed a one-page patient safety culture survey. The survey will be sent out to staff once a year to track the hospital's progress in addressing safety concerns.

A patient safety survey can be a powerful tool for hospitals. It gives administrators and upper management a snapshot of the hospital staff's understanding of safety issues, and allows trainers to pinpoint areas that need improvement.

To develop the survey, CMC compared several similar surveys found online, from sources such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Anonymous surveys get honest answers

The survey is anonymous, which allows the respondents to answer honestly.

The survey includes open-ended questions at the end, in which respondents are encouraged to write their suggestions for change. Most answers were insightful and agreed with answers that were found in the rest of the survey.

Measure results

The survey was sent out during the fourth quarter of 2005. Of the 813 staff who received the survey, 221 returned it for a 27% response rate. Although the survey is anonymous, it does ask for some demographic information to help filter the results. Most respondents had more than 10 years of service at the hospital and worked at least 40 hours per week on average. Most respondents were registered nurses, although the survey was sent to other staff as well.

Use the results to focus your training

After collecting and analyzing the surveys, CMC found that communication issues were the most pressing need, according to the respondents. As a result, the hospital launched a four-part series on communication skills. Sessions focused on relationships between professionals and how to communicate between them. Using a movie night theme, the four sessions focused on the following four topics:

  • Something to talk about: Improving communication skills
  • Terms of endearment: Nurse-to-patient communication skills
  • Mission impossible?: Nurse-to-nurse and interdepartmental communication skills
  • Walk the line: Nurse-to-physician communication skills

The sessions included discussions, role playing, refreshments, and door prizes.

Editor's Note: This excerpt was taken from Briefings on Patient Safety, July 2006, HCPro, Inc.



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