The Evidence-Based Patient Experience

June 12, 2015

All of our patients’ opinions and perceptions are evidence-based.  Each of us uses deductive reasoning to make predictions into the immediate future.

Deductive reasoning is adding up what we know to arrive and understand what we do not know.  In other words, everything and everyone that is seen and heard is a clue to what is going to happen next.

What does a patient learn when he/she sees a nurse upset, or a family arguing, or a doctor and nurse having words, or a messy waiting room, or old meal trays?

The evidence available to patients and families who have lots of time to “stop, look, and listen” creates fertile ground for unspoken assumptions.  And, most of these assumptions/conclusions/perceptions are never spoken.

That basically means that the details that matter to patients and that are the basis of their experience, often evade hospital detection.

Florence Nightingale wrote that patients hate ambiguity; if they are not given enough information, they will tally up what they do know and “make up their own mind.”

So, be a novice, a guest, a family member, and an interested party.  Walk into your hospital.  Stop.  Look.  Listen.

What conclusion do you come to?

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