A Journey Back in Time: Impacting Patient Satisfaction Scores

Nursing is a science and an art that has it's roots in holistic healing therapies. With the current health care focus on technology and productivity, nurses have relinquished practices that increased patients' perception of the hospital experience. After evaluating scores on the Gallup Poll Survey results, several changes for nursing interventions were implemented to impact patients' perception of nursing. Discharge teaching and comfort measures were the items the team identified as areas to improve. The Mission Statement is to provide patients with current and consistent knowledge, through idividualized educational means during the hospital stay that meets or exceeds the expectations of our customer families. The value statements included:(1). The importance of empowering the mother through education and support to care for herself and her infant. (2). The value of the bonded relationship between the mother and her extended family. (3). The diversity and multicultural beliefs of the family unit. (4). Our patients deserve dedicated time to learn, ask questions, and receive follow-up support before and after discharge from our unit. (5). We believe that successful customer satisfaction comes from high quality patient care and thorough educational service. The mission and values are at the heart of the discharge team that collaborate with lactation support and the physicians to plan and implement individualized discharge teaching. A group of nurses accepted the project as part of their bonus incentive credit. The bonus incentive program is a management tool to empower and reward staff to participate in the design and functioning of work flow processes. A plan was also developed to increase the use of holistic therapies such as back rubs, infant massage, aromatherapy, and a calm environment. Through reviving old practices the veteran nurses and the novice nurses are developing nursing interventions using holistic therapies to improve patient's perception of care.