Crossover of the patient satisfaction surveys, adverse events and patient complaints for continuous improvement in radiotherapy department

Abstract

Background The patient’s needs and expectations can be assessed through satisfaction surveys, adverse event declarations and records of complaints. However, by crossing individual complaints, satisfaction surveys in combination with adverse events received we could get valuable information. The objective is to identify common elements of work between these different sources to improve care. Methods A retrospective analysis of patient’s complaints, surveys and adverse events was carried out in order to highlight common improvement items between these 3 sources of information. Results A satisfaction survey was given to the patients at the end of their treatment, who filled it out and left it in the “ad hoc” letterbox. At the end of December 2019, 4695 questionnaires had been collected (response rate 37%). In addition, since 2014, 1369 patients (approximately 20 patients per month) have been interviewed “face to face” by the research nurse who assesses their satisfaction using open questions. At the same time, a collection of complaints and adverse events was carried out. All this data has been analysed and cross-checked in order to highlight areas for improvement, in order to strengthen the safety and quality of care in our department. Conclusions Collecting and analysing satisfactions surveys, unexpected events and complaints constitute in our opinion, an effective tool to achieve patient empowerment. We aim for the patients to become a real player in their safety, involved in the overall effort to improve quality of their radiotherapy treatment by reporting what does not meet their expectations.

Consumer compliments about nursing and midwifery care: A 12‐month retrospective analysis

“…It has been proposed that composite measures that include both patient and family satisfaction with other quality indicators or measures are needed to better reflect care quality (Connolly & Wright, 2017;Cucchiaro et al, 2022). Further, compassion has been identified as a key feature of nursing and midwifery care quality, Sinclair et al, 2017) but this is seldom measured in healthcare delivery.…”

“…The fundamentals of nursing and midwifery care inform the nursing processes of assessment, problem identification, planning, implementation and evaluation (O'Connell, 1998), that is expected to underpin clinical decision making in nursing and midwifery care (O'Brien et al, 2015). It has been proposed that composite measures that include both patient and family satisfaction with other quality indicators or measures are needed to better reflect care quality (Connolly & Wright, 2017; Cucchiaro et al, 2022). Further, compassion has been identified as a key feature of nursing and midwifery care quality, (Feo, Kitson, & Conroy, 2018; Sinclair et al, 2017) but this is seldom measured in healthcare delivery.…”