Improving Emergency Department Patient Experience Through an Organizational Values-Aligned Standardized Behavioral Model

Abstract

Introduction: Patient experience in the setting of the emergency department (ED) is an area of strategic priority for all healthcare facilities. Patient experience can be affected by several factors that encompass the cultural, behavioral, and psychological domains of the healthcare organization. Al Hada Armed Forces Hospital, in its efforts to achieve the strategic objectives of continuously improving the patient experience at scale, implemented an ED-basedbehavioral model of service behaviors that was adapted to match the local community needs and practiced by the frontline healthcare staff at the ED during Q2-2021. Methods: A pre-experimental and postexperimental design was used for our patient experience quality improvement project. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement model for improvement plan-do-study-act was used to implement the quality improvement initiative. Our work is reported in accordance with the SQUIRE (Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence for Education) 2.0 guidelines from the EQUATOR network. Results: The ED patient experience mean score improved during the postimplementation phase by 5.23 points (8% increase) in Q1-2022 and reached a sustainability level during Q3-2022. Conclusion: This quality improvement project in patient experience at our ED provides strong evidence for adopting organizational values–aligned standardized service behaviors to improve the patient experience at scale across ED settings.

Keywords

• patient experience
• quality improvement
• emergency department
• patient-centered care