Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

16 PATIENT EXPERIENCE California hospital lets young surgery patients drive to OR By Harrison Cook M odesto, Calif.-based Doctors Medical Center lets pediatric patients drive to the operating room in mini cars, which helps alleviate stress before surgery, according to KTVU Fox 2. "When they find out they can go into the operating room riding in a cool little car, they light up and, in most cases, their fears melt away," Krista Deans, a spokesperson for Doctors Medical Center, told KTVU Fox 2. The car, a black Mercedes Benz, is loaded with a fully equipped stereo, preloaded with music, an MP3 player jack, working lights and a horn. If young patients cannot drive the car themselves, the mini convertible has remote control capabilities. The practice also helps ease parents' anxieties about their child's surgery, according to Ms. Deans. "[W]hen parents see their children put at ease, it puts them at ease as well," she told KTVU Fox 2. "It can be traumatizing for a young patient to be peeled away from their parents as they head into surgery. This truly helps everyone involved." The idea of bringing the car into the hospital came from Kimberly Mar- tinez, RN, a preoperative nurse who sought ways to reduce pediatric patients' stress and anxiety heading into surgery. n Where do patients share physician reviews online? 5 survey insights By Jessica Kim Cohen F acebook is one of the most com- mon places patients share physician experiences online, but users don't use the social network to assess their next provider, according to a survey from Binary Fountain, an online reputation management company. Binary Fountain commissioned market re- search firm OnePoll to conduct its survey on digital engagement among healthcare consumers. From July 11-13, OnePoll polled more than 1,000 American adults who reported having a physician. Here are five survey insights: 1. Roughly half of Americans (51 percent) indicated they share their healthcare experiences using either social media or online review sites, a 65 percent increase from Binary Fountain's 2017 survey results. 2. Millennials are most likely to share their healthcare experiences online, with 70 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 reporting they have done so. 3. Facebook is the most used channel to share healthcare experiences online for older millennials and Gen Xers (ages 25 to 54). Among younger millennials aged 18 to 24, Google is the most common online platform to share healthcare experiences. 4. The majority of Americans (70 percent) indicated online ratings and review sites have influenced their decision when selecting a physician. Forty-one percent of patients said they checked online rat- ings and reviews of their physician, even when referred by another provider. 5. A few of the common websites pa- tients use to select a physician are the hospital or clinic's website (34 percent), Google (29 percent), WebMD (18 per- cent), Healthgrades (15 percent) and Facebook (12 percent). n Patients say Googling health symptoms improves communication with physicians By Jessica Kim Cohen A dults who search for health information on the internet before visiting the hos- pital say it improves communication with their physician, according to a study published in e Medical Journal of Australia. Researchers asked 400 adult patients who visited one of two large tertiary referral center emergency departments in Melbourne, Australia, to complete a survey about their health-related internet searches and their subsequent attitudes toward treatment compliance between February and May 2017. Almost half of the patients surveyed — 49 percent — said they regularly searched the internet for health information, and 34.8 percent said they searched their cur- rent health problem online before visiting the ED. The average age of participants was 47.1 years, however, younger patients were more likely to search online before visiting the ED. More than three-quarters of the respondents — 77.3 percent — reported that search- ing for health information online before visiting the ED improved communication with their physician. Most patients said they would not or would rarely doubt their physician's diagnosis (79 percent) or change their treatment plan (91 percent) based on conflicting information they found online. e study authors concluded, "searching had a positive impact on the doctor-patient interaction and was unlikely to reduce adherence to treatment." n

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