Acute care nurses score higher than national average in survey
Celebrating what's working just got a little bit easier, thanks to information from regional Patient Experience Survey done by the National Research Corporation of Canada.
The organization measures a person's interaction with the health care system across the continuum by surveying them on the Picker principles of patient-centred care: patient's preferences, emotional support, physical comfort, information and education, continuity and transition, coordination of care, access to care, family and friends.
People who accessed acute care services between April 1st 2013 and March 31st, 2014 were surveyed. Surveys were provided both in paper (via mail) and online in two waves.
Survey responses were below national averages, but about 1982 (out of a possible 6893) people provided their thoughts on the acute care they received. The responses were measured against national acute care averages that are updated twice a year.
With respect to nursing specific areas of focus, nurses in the Region scored higher than the national average in areas of access to care, emotional support, courtesy and information and education. While these are the broad categories, this translates into specific actions that people receiving care can relate to: how available nurses are, if the nurses discussed the person's anxieties and fears, if a person felt they had confidence and trust in nurses, and if the nurses answered their questions.
When people were asked specific questions were asked about pain management, response time for the call button, receiving pain medication and getting help to go to the bathroom, acute care nurses in the Region scored higher than the national average. The same is true for the nursing role in transition: discussing the purpose of home medication, talking about when to resume normal activities, alerting people to what danger signals to watch for and who to call if there is an issue.
The areas where acute care nurses received the highest scores were for quick response times to the call button (96.1%), courtesy (95.6%), working together with doctors (93.7%) and availability (92%).