Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

24 PATIENT EXPERIENCE 14 things cancer patients want during a hospital stay By Megan Knowles F or patients hospitalized with cancer, attention to timing and quality communication from clinicians is key to giving them a better experience. To improve patient experience, hospitals need to act on patient feed- back, Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, senior vice president for clinical safety at Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare, wrote in a blog post for Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine's Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Dr. Pronovost helped compile "patient wish lists" using the most common pieces of feedback the hospital received from patient letters or surveys. e Johns Hopkins Hospital Patient and Family Advisory Council developed individual patient wish lists to speak to their own patient populations' specific needs, including cancer patients, a spokesper- son for Johns Hopkins Medicine told Becker's Hospital Review. Here are 14 things cancer patients said they wanted from clinicians during their time at the hospital: 1. Regard patients and their caregivers as partners in treatment, recovery and beyond. 2. Give patients time and focused attention to answer their questions and listen to their ideas. 3. Remember each patient's time has value and be honest about delays and expectations. 4. Address what matters most to patients; proactively manage their pain, engage them in their care. 5. Respond quickly when patients call for help. 6. Allow patients to sleep. 7. Make scheduling easy. 8. Be open to patients' desire for complementary medicine used with mainstream medical care, such as acupuncture. 9. Screen patients for stress, distress and depression. 10. Assist in coordinating and navigating care in a timely manner. 11. Reinforce the introduction of all medical providers to patients and their caregivers included in their care. 12. Update the white board in patient rooms and ensure name tags are visible. 13. Establish mutual communication methods and share all pertinent treatment information to enable patients to make informed deci- sions. 14. Ensure clear and transparent communications in care handoff among team members. n 40% of patients couldn't remember whether their physicians wore a white coat By Anuja Vaidya A study published in the American Journal of Perinatology examined whether a phy- sician not wearing a white coat during postpartum rounds affected patient-physician communication scores. Researchers conducted a randomized, con- trolled trial of 178 postpartum women at a university hospital. Eighty-seven women were randomly assigned to a postpartum physician team wearing a white coat, while 91 women were assigned to a physician team not wearing a white coat. Researchers found 40.4 percent of patients did not remember whether their physicians wore a white coat or not. There was also no difference in physician communication scores. "Not wearing a white coat during postpartum rounds did not affect the patient-physician com- munication or patient satisfaction scores," the study authors concluded. n UCSF, Dignity Health partner to create patient engagement platform By Julie Spitzer D ignity Health and UC San Francisco Health, both based in San Francisco, plan to merge their digital engagement platforms to improve the patient experience, the health systems an- nounced in August. UCSF will tap into Dignity's proprietary cloud-based platform, allow- ing the two health systems to jointly develop an improved patient experience. The health systems said they hope their platform will serve as a model for hospitals nationwide. "Dignity Health is pushing the boundaries of digital transformation and digital therapeutics across the continuum of care," Shez Partovi, MD, chief digital officer of Dignity Health, said in a news release. "This collaboration between UCSF and Dignity Health will set a new national standard for how patients should be supported through their digital healthcare journeys." UCSF will start by redesigning its web and mobile user experience, with Dignity's help, to devise ways of putting health information in patients' hands. It plans to support this personalized, mobile-respon- sive infrastructure with analytics and machine learning. For the second phase of the collaboration, UCSF's Center for Digital Health Innovation and Dignity will create a digital system connecting patients and providers as they move from primary and secondary care to more acute care services. n

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