How to Use Real-time Patient Feedback to Achieve Magnet Designation

Make a lasting impact on patient feedback experience and drive home excellent employee engagement. 

The pandemic called COVID has actually shown a different aspect of humanity and godhood to us. The doctors and hospital staff (nurses) are serving tirelessly facing all adversities with a smile. Humanity strongly believes that the goal is to bring about the power gratitude has with a lasting humane connection to create that kind of a cultural change, which is lasting and real. 

However, every organization – be it the state-of-the-art hospitality industry or any other business is prone to making errors. To understand what kind of action can actually create an impactful difference in the lives of the customers, businesses need to receive real-time feedback. 

In the case of hospitals, large or small, patient feedback is essential to create the right kind of facilities in their system. Quality reviews and real-time feedback when fed in software or tools help in focusing compassion and empathy deliverance. Any healthcare unit taking patient care and experience with seriousness can receive game-changing business outcomes using patient feedback software.  

An important and inseparable unit of the hospitality service sector is the nurses and midwives. Their contribution to patient healthcare is enormous and finds paramount significance. A substantial amount of research has been going on how the work environment affects nurse satisfaction. Those organizations having higher recruitments and retention rates of nurses had fourteen common features, the study called ‘forces of magnetism’. The American Academy of Nursing (AAN) in 1983 emerged with the terminology “Magnet” that eventually brought in American Nursing Credentialing Centre’s (AANC’s) program on Magnet Designation/Recognition. 

What is Magnet Recognition? 

This is a prestigious recognition or endorsement for hospitals and nursing homes demonstrating nursing excellence and patient care of high quality. The golden benchmark of nursing is the magnet designation and has been structured around five of basic and original fourteen norms. 

During the process of recognition, a culture of patient safety, accountability, and respect is cultivated. This status is actually performance-driven and helps leaders to use the process to identify strengths and opportunity areas in nursing. 

With Magnet designation, there is external prestige along with internal benefits like: 

· Recruiting and retaining high-level talent 

· Lower training costs as attrition rate of staff is low 

· Shared process of decision making 

· Staff engagement 

· High-end care of the patient on the basis of best practices 

· High level of patient satisfaction 

· With lower rates in infections from hospitals, and  mortality, receiving positive outcomes in patients 

Need for Magnet Designation 

A huge crisis has been observed globally in recruiting and retaining nurses and has fuelled interest in the Magnet Recognition Program (MRP). MRP is an international system of accreditation for the nursing excellence that has been built in the United States of America. It has been created to build work environments that can attract and retain and empower nursing talents so that excellent patient care can be delivered. 

If you have received a magnet status, your organization is accredited for high-quality patient care and excellence in nursing, along with achieving higher satisfaction with lesser burnout in nurses. There have been researches showing that creating a positive professional ambiance for the nurses leads to a better outcome for patients, staff, and hospitalizations. 

Crisis in recruitment and retention of nurses 

There has been a substantial amount of rising in the attrition rate of the nurses since 2011. There are pieces of evidence in the study that almost 45 percent of the nurses exited their profession than joining in 2016/2017. The notable rise in nurses and midwives exodus apart from retirement were: 

·  Working situations and conditions including the levels of staffing 

·  Lack of personal care or ill health due to the excessive stressful working atmosphere 

A kind of disillusionment with the kind of quality care that is being provided to the patients 

The reason behind the poor performance and the lack of manpower in the nursing profession – a service sector really vital for mankind is – an adequate patient feedback system. If there was a proper system, application, or software that could monitor, analyze, and apply based on patient feedback, the healthcare industry could have been more efficient and active in providing adequate care. 

Real-time patient experience – A significant measure to achieving magnet status 

The Medical center at Vanderbilt University conducted a survey, where patients were found feeling safer realizing the facility they were using followed protocols of infection control. The magnet designation is proof that the organization goes beyond providing merely nursing care and encompasses a high-quality experience for its patients. This defined distinction helps acquire newer patients owing to the excellent safety protocol maintenance and nursing care. 

However, the question worth asking is – how to reach that threshold that provides the eclectic badge of magnet designation? Well, a real-time excellent patient experience that could be recorded through patient feedback/survey software is the obvious answer. In case your hospital has excellent patient feedback software that can identify the pain points in your organization (especially in terms of the service provided by the nursing team and maintenance of safety protocols) you are a potential organization for magnet designation.   

Nine patient experience pillars that can bring positive patient feedback 

Retention and continuity of customers also improve when the patient’s trust, know, and like you. You can be recognized as a Magnet facility if your work environment is positive and safe and contributes to a welcoming ambiance. 

One of the best attributes of magnet status is patient feedback, apart from indicators for nurse-sensitive issues and nurse satisfaction. The nine approved domains by a magnet that build the pillar for patient experience are: 

1.   How well were your staff engaged in patient care 

2.   How well did you educate your patient about the condition, precautions, cure, etc 

3.   How well was the team’s care coordination together to care for your wellbeing 

4.   How well was the safety aspect taken care of 

5.   How good was the service after recovery 

6.   Were the nursing staff courteous, respectful, and friendly 

7.   How responsive was the team to your needs and queries 

8.   Was the experience painful 

9.   How were the nurses communicating with you about your care? Were they listening carefully 

If you are an organization looking for Magnet designation, working diligently on the nine domains inpatient experience can easily help reach the status. Earlier qualitative responses were critical to acquire the status. Now, almost three-fourth of the entire process is data-focused. Empirical data like the rate of fall inpatient, their mortality rates, and patient survey data are all taken into account while making decisions to understand if the organization can earn Magnet status. To earn the designation, for the period applied, the organization needs to outperform the empirical data’s national mean for five quarters non-stop out of eight. 

Customer Care is Crucial – Your Patients Need Care and Patient Listening 

So, what’s the next stage after you have carefully installed patient feedback software? What are the careful monitors you need to employ after you have successfully aspired to reach the magnet designation inpatient care? Thell, study say– you must use modern technology to get your work evaluated and aspire to perform better. However, you must also know that you must acquire certain soft skills that go a long way and create that haven out of your business. 

The survey reveals, almost 95 percent of the patients reported that being treated well with respect and courtesy and careful listening are crucial factors to a positive experience for the healthcare providers. Patients strongly feel that most of the time, careful listening and fast response to concerns of the patients allow more impactful service recovery also adjusting to quality issues. 

Certain reputed hospitals mentioned their surveys having minimal questions being sent to the people in the outpatient department immediately after their visit. This enabled more relevant and on-time responses and presented scope for immediate service. Team leads in the nurses (head matrons) set up alerts about the low scores in surveys so that they could immediately reach out and use an empathetic approach towards addressing any issues. 

By monitoring this kind of feedback process, the hospital was able to identify areas for betterment and create rapid necessary adjustments. Narrowing down the survey’s focus with fewer questions reduces the fatigue of data inputs and helps the hospital over-perform patient experience. This enables higher engagement in the nurses as they have ready data about how the patients feel and if adequate care has been provided. 

Conclusion 

Magnet designation is a recognition all hospitals and healthcare units are striving to acquire. This benchmark is an indicator your organization is a superlative, patient-oriented unit. Delivering quantifiable and positive patient experience is one essential component within magnet designation. It requires that nursing staff have adequate resources plus skill sets to provide adequate patient care. 

Using real-time survey software or patient feedback tools nurses, and chief matrons can immediately listen to patients and administer immediate recovery. Gone are days of the paper survey. Today hospitals are leveraging the latest in technology to listen intently to their patients for care and immediate cure. To come up to the threshold requirements of national clinical metrics plus provide immediate response/feedback, enables high-quality patient experience and thereby, ensures magnet designation. Experience the power of real-time patient feedback software to create the best of patient experience and help in reaching a global nursing threshold ‘Magnet Designation’ – experience the magnetic power of survey!!