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Patient Satisfaction Survey Metrics

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Brenda— I am going to play devils advocate a bit here in regard to health care centers using patient satisfaction survey measures to improve the quality of care they provide to patients. Of course nurse and patient satisfaction surveys play an important role in keeping health care providers accountable for the patient care they deliver and ensuring nursing staffing levels are adequate to guarantee patient safety in medical settings. However, having worked in the health care arena for fifteen years, there are times that patient satisfaction survey metrics can be detrimental to health care providers’ careers and the quality of patient care delivered. For instance, Robbins (2015) explains sometimes health care providers will go out of their way to give patients what …show more content…

Most patients know that giving antibiotics when it is not clinically indicated is wasteful and in the long-run cause antibiotic resistance in patients. Unfortunately, some patients get seriously irritated when they ask for antibiotics and are not given them, even after the health care clearly explains why they are not warranted. Some health care providers just back down and give the patient what they want to avoid upsetting them even more and causing them to complain or potentially write negative reviews of the care they received. Thus, patient satisfaction surveys are useful when the information supplied is used in context and not blown out of portion when patients’ demands are unrealistic. In the example you provided regarding maintaining adequate nurse staffing levels, I think it might be more useful for health care centers to utilize nursing satisfaction surveys and the medical error metrics to ensure quality health care is being provided to patients. Also, my organization encourages nurses to report near misses (when nurses come close to making medical errors, but are able to avoid patient injuries) that occur, in the hope that they can correct future circumstances that could cause harm to

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