Improved Patient Satisfaction by Optimizing Call Bell Resolutions Practice in Clinical Setting: An Action Research at Medical and Surgical Ward, National Guard Hospital Affairs Dammam

Abstract

Optimizing an effective communication system is very important to provide quality care services to patients, especially during emergencies. Thus, a cross-sectional quantitative design study was conducted at NGHA Dammam starting from November 2019 until February 2020 with the aimed to examine the patient’ satisfaction related to nurse call bell responsive system and the time nurse respond to call bell and the time nurse intervene to the patients’ need at Medical and Surgical Ward. A pre-survey related to patient satisfaction regarding nurse call bell responsiveness was conducted within two weeks starting November 2019. A total of 4 items were tested on patients at the study location including i) The time the nurse responds to the call bell, ii) The nurse responds and intervenes the patient's needs, iii) Patient satisfaction related to patient's education about the call bell and iv) Patient satisfaction regarding the nurse call bell service. About n=34 nurses involve in pre-survey and n=110 nurses in post-survey. The pre-survey (Nov-19) analysis result showed that the majority of the nurses took less than 2 minutes to respond to the call bell from their patients (n=28; 82%), n=5 took about 3-5 minutes to respond and n=1 (3%) took more than 10 min responsive. However, about n=10 (29%) of them took between 3-5 minutes that the nurses took to intervene to patient's needs after attending the call bell. Whereas, post-survey analysis found that the majority of the nurses did intervene to patient's need < 2 min after responding to the call bell (n=78) (Dec-19), n=100 (Jan-20) and n=100 (Feb-20). It was also found that there are n=24 nurses intervene between 3-5 minutes (Dec-19), n=7 (Jan-20) and n=7 (Feb-20). While as many as n=3 that the nurse intervenes to patient's need in between 5-10 min (Jan-20) and n=3 (Feb-20) and as many as n=8 nurses intervene to patient's need > 10min (Dec-19). The finding also revealed that majority of patients/relatives stated that they were satisfied with the call bell related education provided by the nurse (n=92) and also stated that they were satisfied with the nurse call bell responsive system service at the study location (n=86). This study proves that optimizing the system's responsive nurse call bell system as an effective communication approach has successfully increased patient satisfaction with the services provided in addition to contributing to the improvement of patient safety policies at the study location.