Elevating Nurse Leader Visits for Enhanced Patient Experience

Video Transcript

Renee Miller, Principal Program Manager of Human Experience at Providence Central Division

We wanted to move away from our previous organizational goal, which was focused more on the quantity of our visits–we’re really trying to visit with 90% of our patients. We wanted to shift that more to being intentional and purposeful and really look at what impact those visits have on our patients’ overall experience. Really shifting our focus from the quantity to the quality. Additionally, we wanted to engage across the entire division with a more comprehensive focus on nurse leader visits as a whole.

All of our sample sizes were of statistical significance. We wanted to make sure that any of those units had at least 30 surveys that had been returned. And then we used a baseline of a 12 month period. So we use all of our data from 2023 from January through the end of December. Then our recommendation was once we’d identified select units, we’re going to propose to partner with them for 90 days. Then we’ll make an assessment at 90 days to see if additional investment time is needed, and then we’ll continue to monitor that progress on a quarterly basis. I certainly think of them as a baseline. So if someone’s not to this state like, let’s not make it more complicated.

There’s 6 things that worked really, really well from this investment work. The first thing was to make sure that our leaders were scheduling time on the calendar for Nurse leader visits. Never, ever likely is it going to happen that they’ll actually go and have a visit during that time. But it’s the idea that they have it scheduled in a block. And it’s a nice visual reminder for them, especially if someone isn’t in the practice of already consistently going out there to visit patients.

The next thing was introducing themselves as a nurse leader and then making sure that they have the nurse leader designation badge. We also made sure that we shared a certificate of completion with them at the end, which you’ll see there on your screen. We had our Central Division, CNO and our Executive Director from our Human Experience team sign those certificates. There was lots of socialization and celebration drilled down at the unit level at the hospital on site to recognize their efforts and wonderful accomplishments.

So how did we get there? What did we do? What were the kind of the details that made it work? I want to dive into that. The first thing that we looked at was our data, which really helps begin to tell the story. We’re very, very fortunate that we have an amazing data program manager that can create some wonderful reports for us, make them visually appealing and easy to read.

I want to share a little bit about the 3 different graphs that you see on this screen in more detail. The first one reflects data drilled down to the unit level about the patient’s perception if they recall having a nurse leader visit or not. So this graph is helpful, not necessarily to identify the units that we wanted to invest in for the work, but to continue to monitor the way that patients view or remember being visited by a nurse leader. Anything in purple is positive right? That is saying that “Yes”, patients recall being visited by a nurse leader, and anything in gray is “No”, or “Not sure”. The more purple the better in this instance. And this is a specialty question that we added on to our survey. Not every hospital asks this question, but it’s one way that we can say “was the time that you spent with the patient impactful enough that they, a) knew you were a nurse leader to remember that you sat there and had a conversation with them or they just felt like someone in a leadership position was there. This has been really helpful for us, ongoing as we are able to look at that information and reflect on improvement over time.

The next slide is really what helped us identify who we wanted to invest in across our division. Gosh, I think we have at least like 120 units, we pull this report for everyone. The dotted horizontal line that you see across is that 5% quality. So this is that measurement if you’re below the 5% mark.

It’s definitely a long game and being really patient and knowing that kind of building that strong foundation is really what’s going to lead to long-term sustainable results.

We’ve continued the work in 2025. I’m happy to say that since we had good success, we’re definitely wanting to continue moving that forward. We’re continuing to use our reporting in the same fashion.

For those patients that said “Yes”, they recall having a nurse later visit year to date, they were providing a top box rating of 77.22 versus patients that said, “No, I don’t recall having a nurse leader visit”, their top box rating is only at 41.1 8. So this is a quick and easy way just to be able to see the impact and the value that your patient experience or your nurse later visit efforts are having on patient experience.

Some successes, the first one, which I think is always nice, is that our nurse leaders truly enjoy their time with patients and families. I think it was a really nice reminder for them that their patients are extremely grateful, and they have a lot of really positive things to say. And how impactful it can be to just not go in with an agenda to fix something, but just to go in, to sit, to learn, to hear about our patients. It can be really lonely to be in the hospital, especially if you don’t have family or visitors, not to mention really scary, depending upon how long you’re there. Having that human connection piece was really valuable for our nurse leaders, it also had a strong impact on our patients.