An Interactive Patient Satisfaction Movie

Doctor Klinger is the Chief Resident at a busy city hospital.  He recently bought a house and his wife is experiencing a difficult pregnancy.  Life is stressful.  

Nearing the end of a long, busy and tiring work day, he is paged to a patient’s room to perform a lumbar puncture – none of the residents are available.  He’s late for dinner and his wife would like him home.  He hurriedly explains the procedure to the patient and fails to notice the confused, frightened look on the patient’s face.  The patient feels intimidated and does not speak up.  

What impact do you think this encounter will have on the patient’s experience at the facility?  What would you want Doctor Klinger to do if this happened at your facility?  Do you know a Doctor (or nurse) Klinger? 

HCCS announces an exciting new INTERACTIVE training movie that allows your staff to “become” Doctor Klinger (and four other staff members) and make decisions about his communication and patient interactions.  The course is designed to increase patient satisfaction scores, improve staff communication, patient care and healthcare outcomes.

Healthcare facilities are looking for ways to increase patient satisfaction.  This training program can help.   

The online training course, The Anatomy of Care, begins with a fictional yet highly realistic portrayal of a local news team filming patient care at a busy healthcare facility.  The course puts you in charge of what the news team sees.  You virtually become five staff members and make decisions throughout their daily routines.  For each staff member, you are asked to make choices that impact the care and experience that the patients receive at the facility.

The five staff members include a doctor, nurse, transporter, unit clerk and an environmental services worker.  A nurse would normally view the course from a nurse’s perspective and learn how their communication impacts patient care.  However, the real AHA! moment comes when that same nurse views the course from the perspective of the other staff members.

While it would be expected that a training course on Patient Satisfaction would present provider-patient communication, The Anatomy of Care course also spends significant time on staff to staff communication.  Proper staff communication can have an enormous impact on employee satisfaction, patient care, outcomes and therefore patient satisfaction.

I spoke with Debbie Newsholme, former eLearning manager for Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta Georgia for 13 years and now a Learning Consultant for HCCS about The Anatomy of Care training course. 

“The course gives individuals the opportunity to walk in the shoes of other staff members and helps to achieve a collaborative environment that fosters and encourages teamwork”, says Ms. Newsholme.  “It takes staff members out of the silos that exist in most of today’s healthcare facilities and provides insight and empathy into the roles that others play in the care continuum.”

“It takes more than one person to care for a patient, it takes a team.  Of course that team includes doctors and nurses but it also includes transporters, clerks, environmental services, volunteers and anyone else that comes in contact with the patient, their medical information or any area of the facility that a patient might access.  Staff members need to treat each other with mutual respect.  Those organizations that can communicate this value will be very successful.”

Why is Patient Satisfaction Important?

Patient satisfaction is often measured through HCAHPS surveys.  HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) is a national, standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perceptions of their hospital experience.  HCAHPS data is reported publicly through the Hospital Compare website.  Facilities that do not report HCAHPS data will not receive their full Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) annual payment update.  In the future, there is the possibility that organizations that show low patient satisfaction will receive lowered reimbursements.

Healthcare facilities are looking for ways to increase patient satisfaction.  This training program can help.   

The new Anatomy of Care training course is available today for facility previews.

For more information about this exciting interactive movie, contact HCCS.