Using the AHRQ SOPS Surveys webpage, provided in the topic Resources, select the SOPS survey appropriate for the practice setting in which you work. Complete the survey at your site and discuss how your facility scored. What changes would you recommend based on the survey results?
Solution
The SOPS Hospital survey is the one that I used to assess my culture. As a manager on two intermediate care units, it is sometimes challenging to identify all issues that surfaces on the unit. I conducted this survey with nurses from my units, from both day and night shifts. In this way, this gave me an opportunity to receive feedback from nurses of different settings. My facility also conducted a survey of its own that revealed similar results as the AHRQ Hospital Survey.
Survey results proved that the lowest results were tied to communication. The most important part of running any business is communication, and its crucial for a healthcare facility to have a culture that strongly supports open communication between nurses, physicians, leaders, and other departments. Communication about errors scored the lowest. Nurses feel as if they are not in tune with leaders that encourage them to speak up in regards to errors or incidents. Communication openness was the next on the list which is very concerning due to the active participation and presence of leaders on each unit throughout the week. As a nurse leader for the past couple of years, it is necessary to continuously work on improving the morale of the unit and one of the things included in our action plans is to have “open door policy.” This is to inspire any staff member to establish a rapport with leaders so that things can be addressed and solutions can be implemented. Small wins are celebrated as an attempt to engage with the employees. Reporting patient safety events seems to be a struggle for some of the nurses, particularly day shift nurses because they feel as if they have time constraints on reporting the issues while providing exceptional patient care. Typically after survey results, it is necessary for leaders to establish an action plan and perform root cause analyses to continuously improve the culture of the hospital. The changes that I would recommend is to have a more user friendly system to use for reporting events. Daily team huddles that includes all team members could be a way to increase communication of the team.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2019). Hospital survey on patient safety culture | agency for healthcare research & quality. Ahrq.gov. https://www.ahrq.gov/sops/surveys/hospital/index.html