Patient experience with staff introductions | HQCA Focus

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Emergency Department

Patient experience with staff introductions

Percentage of patients who reported that doctors and/or nurses always introduced themselves during their emergency department visit. (see data dictionary)

What do you see?

  • Are there any trends over time at the emergency department(s) where you work or would be most likely to visit?
  • Are there differences in patient experiences between hospitals of the same type (e.g., Large Urban)?

Why is it meaningful?

  • Is there a relationship between this data and another healthcare area?
  • Do you see successes worth highlighting or opportunities for improvement?

Understanding "patients’ experiences with staff introductions"

Surveying patients about their experiences in the emergency department provides a voice for patients about the quality of their care.

The HQCA asked emergency department patients:

  • During this emergency department visit, how often did nurses introduce themselves to you? Doctors? 

Patients could choose “never”, “sometimes”, “usually”, or “always”.  Only the “always” responses are included in the chart above.

The relationship patients have with their care provider starts with an introduction – the simple act of the caregiver giving their name and describing their role in providing the patient’s care. Whether the healthcare interaction between the provider and patient is brief, or over an extended period of time, starting with an introduction can build trust and improve patients’ overall experience.

This chart reports on the frequency of introductions from emergency department nurses and doctors because they are the most common healthcare providers in the emergency department. However, patients’ experiences can benefit when all types of healthcare providers and hospital staff introduce themselves.

Understanding the HQCA’s emergency department patient experience survey

Every two weeks, the HQCA conducts a telephone survey with a random sample of patients from each of the 16 emergency departments reported on this website. The patient input collected in the surveys is then analyzed by the HQCA and the results of the question above, and six others, are uploaded to this website every quarter (three months). See our About the data page to learn more about the survey methodology.
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Results for November 2019 to July 2020 are not available for the University of Alberta Hospital and the Stollery Children’s Hospital.

Alberta Quality Matrix for Health

The Health Quality Council of Alberta uses the Alberta Quality Matrix for Health as a way of organizing information and thinking around the complexity of the healthcare system. This measure can be used as input to assess the emergency department’s performance in this dimension of quality: Acceptability.

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