Connecting Patients' Perceptions of Nurses' Daily Care Actions, Organizational Human Caring Culture, and Overall Hospital Rating in Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Surveys

Patient Experience Coordinator: An Innovative Role to Improve Patients' Hospital Experience

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to test the impact of an innovative nonclinical support role to improve patient experiences while supporting nurse work on inpatient units.

BACKGROUND

On the basis of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey, patients' experience declined nationally during the COVID-19 pandemic. A nonclinical support role, titled an Experience Coordinator, was created as a test of change to collaborate with care teams and respond to patients' and families' nonclinical needs.

METHODS

This is a quality improvement (QI) project for a supportive role development and implementation. The health system's HCAHPS data were compared before and after the role was tested on 3 inpatient units.

RESULTS

The HCAHPS data indicated that 5 of the 10 domains' top box ratings increased during the QI project month compared with the previous month.

CONCLUSION

The study findings may support the implementation of new innovative nonclinical positions to alleviate nurses' workload and promote patients' hospital experience.

The development of an evidence-informed Convergent Care Theory: Working together to achieve optimal health outcomes

BACKGROUND

Healthcare is a complex and divergent system with uncertainty, unpredictability, and multi-layered stakeholders. The relationships among the stakeholders are multifaceted and dynamic, requiring continual interpersonal connections, networks, and co-evolution. It is pivotal to have an evidence-informed theory to explain the phenomenon, uniting the multifaceted stakeholders' efforts.

PURPOSE

To describe the development of an evidence-informed theory, the Convergent Care Theory, assembling healthcare stakeholders to work together and achieve optimal health outcomes.

METHODS

The Convergent Care Theory was developed using a theory synthesis approach based on empirical research and literature reviews published by the theory-proposing author. The empirical evidence was categorized into: patients and families, healthcare providers, healthcare organizations, and patients' and healthcare providers' self-care.

RESULTS

The Convergent Care Theory includes four concepts: all-inclusive organizational care , healthcare professional collaborative care, person-centered precision care, and patients ' and healthcare providers' self-care. Achieving convergent care is a process requiring all stakeholders to work together. Six major facilitators emerged from the research evidence: competence, compassion, accountability, trusting, sharing, and engaging.

CONCLUSION

This article introduced the development process of the evidence-informed Convergent Care Theory. Healthcare systems are complex, with multiple stakeholders' needs to meet. The Convergent Care Theory strives to unite healthcare stakeholders, bond resources, and join forces to achieve optimal healthcare outcomes. The underpinning of the theory is a caring culture, which is an underlying code for organizational and team behaviors and the foundation of optimal health outcomes.

A Qualitative Exploration of the Psychological Experience of Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19

This qualitative study describes the psychological experience of patients hospitalized with COVID-19. These patients went through 3 psychological stages: extremely uncertainties during the initial diagnostic stage, complicated feelings of negativity during the treatment stage, and positive growth in the recovery stage. It is important for nurses to provide holistic care.

Promoting a Therapeutic Healing Environment: A Retrospective Examination of HCAHPS "Quiet at Night" Across a Large New York Health System

Promoting respite and sleep impacts a patient's health and their inpatient experience. As New York State's largest health system, Northwell Health has been on a journey to create a healing and therapeutic healthcare environment. By establishing leadership accountability, leveraging patient feedback and adopting evidence-based interventions, system and individual adult inpatient hospital improvements have been noted. Between 2017 and 2020, Northwell's overall system HCAHPS "Quiet at Night" Top Box performance increased by 4.7, improving 30 percentile rank points when compared to the Press Ganey national database. This case study outlines Northwell's pragmatic patient-centered strategy and examines the unanticipated impact of limited visitation due to COVID-19 on this HCAHPS measure.

Associations between Nurse Staffing Levels, Patient Experience, and Hospital Rating

The current study aimed to examine patient experience scores and differences in the scores based on the region and nurse staffing level of hospitals as well as to verify the effect of nurse-related patient experience scores on the overall rating of hospitals. Secondary data from the second Korean Patient Experience Survey-conducted using the cross-sectional design method-were analyzed, and 146 hospitals were included. Patient experience scores included six dimensions, and hospitals were categorized as: tertiary or general hospitals based on their type; capital and non-capital region hospitals based on regions; and beds-nurse or patients-nurse ratios were used based on nurse staffing levels. Pearson's correlation, simple regression, and multiple regression analysis methods were used. Among the six patient experience dimensions, the nurse-related patient experience score of 86.0 was the highest, whereas patient rights score of 78.4 was lowest. Moreover, the patient experience score for general hospitals with low nurse staffing grade was low, and the nurse experience score affected the overall hospital rating in general hospitals (p = 0.040). Policies to improve nurse staffing level are required to provide high-quality nursing care focused on communication with patients, which can enhance patient experience and satisfaction.