Patient trust: A key theme from this year’s PX conference

Our clinical team works with healthcare organizations every day on incorporating patient experience best practices and innovations into their patient care strategies.

One of the ways our nurses, who are also certified patient experience professionals (CPXPs), stays updated on the latest patient experience trends is by participating in The Beryl Institute’s annual patient experience-focused conference, ELEVATE PX.

A key element that showed up in many of the conference’s discussions was the idea of patient trust, and why it’s important for every healthcare organization to focus on.

Whether or not a patient has trust in your staff and the care you provide can affect so many things, like:

• Their willingness to watch the education videos you prescribe
• The likelihood of adhering to their care plan after discharge
• If they want to come back to you for future care needs
• How they talk about you in surveys, reviews, and recommendations

A patient’s trust can be earned, kept, or lost in a single moment.

So every interaction with your patients matters.

And that’s why, as one conference presenter put it, “patient experience is not an outcome, it’s a priority.”

Just like your PX strategies go beyond nurse and provider interactions, think of all the moments where you can build patient trust in your organization.

Some notable tips our team heard throughout the conference include:

Use your leaders to build trust.

Have them round with patients, and listen to their feedback. Patients want to be heard, and you can improve your organization by listening to them.

Shift from service recovery to trust recovery.

Don’t just fix the temporary issue. Follow up with patients to see how they’re feeling, and to make sure the problem is actually solved going forward.

Focus on health equity.

Showing patients that you care about them as people and not just a diagnosis goes a long way to building their trust. For example, on hospital shared the impact of interpreter-led rounding.

Recognize patient experience as a strategic link.

Look at how care is delivered, perceived, and remembered. Your patient experience is what ties together clinical safety, workplace stability, brand loyalty, and organizational growth.

 

 

What patient experience goals (or challenges) does your organization have?

Our team would love to collaborate with you on strategies.