Applying mindfulness to influence the patient and care team experience

Abstract

Objective: In today’s work environment, specifically in health care, mindfulness is a personal and professional strategy to improve performance and productivity. To influence the patient and care team hospital experience through the concepts of mindfulness and perception.

Methods: This was a prospective observational project completed by medical/surgical nurses using an online survey pre- and post an educational program and an aggregate score of the 5 nurse-sensitive questions on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey, a survey based in the United States that is mailed to patients post discharge to home to measure patient satisfaction with their hospitalization. The HCAHPS survey is a patient satisfaction survey required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for all hospitals in the United States. The purpose of the HCAHPS survey is to provide a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perspectives on their hospital care and hospital experience.

Results: The aggregate nurse-sensitive HCAHPS scores increased from 85.5 to 89.8 over one month. For mindfulness, after the educational program, among the ten nurse survey questions the percentage went up as much as 0.57%.

Conclusions: An educational program related to the benefits of mindfulness can positively effect nurses’ engagement in the workplace and positively increase HCAHPS scores. Continuing education on mindfulness should carry over month to month. In this research project, participants provided feedback to the researcher of feeling empowered to bring in new ideas, present different ways to grow, and tackle challenges.