increasing patient satisfaction

You have been appointed to chair a hospital-wide committee to develop and implement a plan to improve patient satisfaction in your facility. Your Chief Nursing Officer has provided you a summary report indicating a steady decline in patient satisfaction over the previous six months. You will need to identify the various resources available for tracking patient satisfaction, establish a clear bench mark and design a specific plan of action for reversing this trend. It is essential to note in your development that research has shown nurse communication and hourly rounding to be key drivers in patient satisfaction metric improvements. These points should be a focus of your change initiative.

The diffusion of innovation theory, or Roger's change theory, was first proposed by Everett Rogers more have a half a century ago. Despite the theories age, it remains relevant to any change process today. The premise of this theory is that different groups of people adapt to changes at different paces. Some people are entirely coping with changes as soon as they are presented with it in things such as new ideas, new technologies, new processes, or anything else that represent an innovation of sorts. Therefore, Roger claimed that any innovation has a natural process of diffusing through these different types of personalities as was predictable to a greater of lesser extent (Kaminiski, 2011).

Figure 1 - Adoption of Innovation (Kaminiski, 2011)

Strengths

• New Technology Tools

• Evidence-based Practices

• Multiple Change Models

Weaknesses

• Current Levels of Dissatisfaction

• Change Model Selection Pressures

• Inappropriate or Non-existent Metrics

Opportunities

• Develop New Metrics

• Implement a Successful Change Strategy

• Improve Patient Satisfaction

Threats

• Choosing the Wrong Model

• Resistance to Change

• Wasted Resources

Borrowing from Roger's theories, it is unlikely that all members of the organization will adopt any new process or technology all at the same time. That is, the organizational members will likely respond to the changes at their own pace; some will quickly accept the change, while others will resist the change on many levels. However, knowing this information beforehand helps the planning process and lets the management know what to expect about the entire change management implementation. For example, knowing that employees will respond to change differently in advance will allow management in various ways. Management can praise the innovators and early adapters, and actually use these individuals to help the other members of the organization more readily advance through the various stages.

The first step of the process will entail building a change management project plan that incorporates all of the evidence-based best practices that can be identified in the process. Any planned change an organization involves the process that enables a company to take control over the implementation of improvement mechanisms that can led to certain objectives. In this case, the objectives entail that the organization make broad sweeping changes so that the entire organization can make an improvement in patient satisfaction. Such improvements can often be difficult and many such projects regularly fail. The change entails the transition of individuals, teams and organizations from a present state of operations in which they have likely grown acquainted with, to transition to new methods, measures, and operational processes.

The first steps will be the planning phase in which a Communication Plan

Effective communication is likely one of the most important aspect of the entire plan as well as one of the critical success factors in any healthcare organization; but it is especially critical in adopting to new systems and processes. Communication must be successfully garnered throughout the organization at all times. For example, the supervisor must be open to receive information transfer between employees and management so that everyone is aware of the advancements in the project's status as well as how the team is reaching progress towards the metrics that have been identified. Studies have even indicated that there is a strong correlation between nurses, communication competence, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction and it is recommended that training programs that are customized to individual characteristics such as self-efficacy and job satisfaction to improve the communicative competence of nurses (Park, Jeoung, & Sok, 2015).

There have been many studies that have tried to understand the relationship between organizational behavior and different leadership styles. Since the research has identified that people will accept change at different styles; This study examines the relationship of emotional intelligence (EI) with transformational leadership (TL) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of the followers using a sample of 57 dyads of managers and their supervisors (i.e., 114 respondents) participated in this study (Modassir & Singh, 2008). Transformational leadership is one of the most popular leadership model and it has been argued that the transformational leadership model is dependent factors that are closely related to the components that are commonly defined within this model and their similarity to those defined within emotional intelligence and the organizational citizenship model. That is, if a transformational leaders have sufficient emotional intelligence and are working in an organization that has a cooperative culture will be more likely to be effective leaders. Being able to recruit a transformational leader to help initiate the project has also been identified as an advantageous idea because research has indicated that this can also serve as a critical success factor (Carter, Armenakis, Feild, & Mossholder, 2012). Therefore, it is recommended that a transformational leader be selected to initiate the project.

Once the transformational phase is complete and employees, in all of Roger's classifications, have come to accept the new operating procedures, then management will have to use the metrics identifies to in the planning phase to guide the organization. The satisfaction related metrics should be deemed the most important in these circumstances, For example, whatever metrics the leadership deems most important, it is reasonable to suspect that patient satisfaction will be at the top of the list. The management then therefore ensure that is patient satisfaction is being met at all time during their visit to this particular department; furthermore, metrics can always be adjusted to attempt to more accurately measure the sentiments that are expressed in whatever feedback is submitted to the management.

As with any project, there will be major budget considerations that must be made when implementing a project such as this. That being said, patient satisfaction can be thought of a more of an investment than an expense. It will require a significant amount of resources, both financial and human, to achieve the desired objective. However, if the objectives are met, then the entire organization would have a more sustainable future.

Staff compliance represents an interesting proposition after recognizing that they will likely adopt the changes at their own pace. For example, it would be hard to punish people for not being able to adapt to change as fast as others; since that is exactly what is expected given the model that is utilized. Therefore, the compliance measures will have to be implemented on a rolling basis and the last few that have trouble adapting might receive an extra motivational boost from some extrinsic motivation. Yet, at the same time, management should keep in mind the normal tendencies that are likely inherent, as Roger's predicts, in any organization.

The evaluation aspect of the plan will also be among the critical success factors. The planning phase will set most of the requirements for change, but these should be as flexible as possible when dealing with both internal and external factors. Obviously, the metric identified in the planning stage that represent best factors based on previous research should be given priority, but everything else in the evaluation of employees, and the organization in general, should be given some leeway to adapt to the findings relative to the collection of evidence. That is, the metrics identified should be quickly adjusted if they are not accurately correlated to the patient satisfaction levels that represent the organization's objective.

A 360-degree feedback system is also known as multi-rater feedback, multisource feedback, or multisource assessment which involves feedback from a number of sources including superiors, sub-ordinates, customers and peers. Such a feedback and evaluation method would be appropriate to change management.

The 360 model include feedback from all perspectives and some versions of the model even include a self-assessment opportunity which allow the employees to completely rate themselves. The primary thought behind this methodology is that it offers employees feedback from each direction in the organization and provides a more comprehensive view of an employee's performance. Such a feedback mechanism offers the best chance of the employee's being able to identify their own contribution to the organization in the most holistic manner as possible. Previously, most feedback systems were traditionally based on a top-down approach, which can be biased in many ways. However, since employees in peer groups typically spend more time together, they are thought to be more qualified to provide meaningful insights that can be used led the team towards the fulfillment of organizational goals (Muniute-Cobb & Alfred, 2010). In fact, the use of a 360 peer feedback evaluation program has been shown to be able to reduce stress and an employee's reduce their intentions to quit and turnover rate (Avey, Luthans, & Jensen, 2009)