Survey Questionnaire For Organizational (NHS) Effectiveness

When healthcare organizations review data collection based on questionnaires, they aim at determining the core reasoning for their study. They can either use internal or external studies, but always, the norm is finding ineffectiveness in certain areas that need major improvements by applying various resolutions. The questionnaire that will be used in this paper is the National Health Service (NHS) inpatient questionnaire.

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The NHS is a public health service employed in England, Scotland, and Wales. UK residents receiving care from the organization do not pay for medical treatment, except for fixed charges for various prescriptions, and dental procedures that have fixed charges. The organizations website points out that they receive over 48 million visits on a monthly basis, and thus, it has become the largest health website that accounts for a quarter of all health-related website traffic. The organization also strives to be worlds leading multi-channel service for every patient engaging with the organization and social care.

The inpatient questionnaire used by the NHS (2013) was to study inpatient experiences at the NHS hospitals. For this reason, people who were likely to receive and fill the questionnaire include the patients, who mainly receive care from the organization, and directly interact with nurses and doctors. The information would be advantageous to the organization as it will use it to increase its effectiveness, especially when dealing with patients. NHS send the questionnaire inside an envelope to the various patients who would subsequently fill their experience while receiving care from the hospitals. As such, people who were unlikely to receive and fill the questionnaire included nurses and doctors who provide care to the patients. The questionnaire sought to identify discrepancies in employee performance levels. For this reason, the patients were at an upper hand of providing the necessary feedback to gauge the general effectiveness of the hospitals. In essence, healthcare organizations can benefit from survey questionnaires in determining the direct impact of its organizational processes that relate to delivering quality care. The questionnaire intended to find how the hospitals personnel interact with patients from the moment they are admitted to the hospital, how they are dealt with in the accident and emergency department, and how they wee treated, the waiting time before being admitted among other issues.

Besides, the questionnaire required that the respondents to fill how they interacted with doctors, including whether they asked questions and if they understood the responses from the doctors, whether they had trust in the doctors, and if they gained and received full attention from the doctors while interacting. Also, the survey questionnaire also inquired about whether the respondents got logical answers from the nurses. The respondents also, through open-end questions, were required to fill and describe their care and treatments at the hospital, as well as describing their satisfaction about the hospital operations. For this reason, NHS, through the questionnaire, intended to investigate the overall effectiveness of the hospitals, and thus, it helped find areas that needed improvement.

For this reason, it is clear that the organization sought to determine whether it needed various improvements in quality of care in the hospitals. Since it touched on every aspect of the organizations, which could need improvement, including personnel, operations, and interaction between patients and the personnel, it was valid for the purpose. In essence, the questionnaire would provide a detailed account of the patient satisfaction levels. In effect, it would be possible for NHS to determine what areas needed improvement, thereby increasing the overall effectiveness. As such, I believe that the survey questionnaire would effectively and efficiently serve the purpose of gauging the overall efficiency of the hospitals. In effect, the various discrepancies would be identified, and therefore corrected, which will increase the patient satisfaction in the hospital, as well as improving the overall effectiveness of the hospital. In essence, quality care is essential in the healthcare profession, and one of the aspects of realizing it is ensuring that the patients are satisfied. Just like other businesses, quality is a vital component of increasing the competitiveness of a company. As such, NHS after improving the various aspects that the patients are not satisfied in will subsequently increase the organizations effectiveness, performance, and satisfaction levels. Besides, NHS combined open-ended and closed questions that allowed the respondents to provide their opinion on aspects that would be improved, which makes the questionnaire valid. Also, the questionnaire incorporated a diversity of patients, making it relevant for assessing general effectiveness of the hospital.

The questions were very detailed. A total of 76 closed-ended questions and three open-ended questions were used (NHS, 2013). They were easy to fill and analyze the answers. In essence, they were straight forward, and anyone would have instant answers, which would significantly ease the data collection process. Many of the closed-end questions required the respondent just to tick, and thus, it was easier for the to fill and return it within a short period. The questions were divided into various sections, where they filled information about personnel, general experience, as well as about their individual information. As such, it would be easy for the respondents to fill in the various answers to the questions and return it within a day or two. Besides, the questions only covered the respondent interaction with the hospital while receiving care, and thus, they are self-explanatory, making them easy to analyze the answers. Since they covered about the interaction experience, the respondents would have a direct response, and thus, it can be derived that the answers can be easily analyzed.

NHS would learn the effectiveness of the hospital's performance in various areas, including whether the emergency department works optimally, its nurses and doctors interact and offer quality care to the patients, whether the hospital personnel involved the patients in the main decisions, such as when they were discharged. Also, it will also gauge whether the patients who were in an emergency situation were taken care of effectively given they needed instant care. The survey questionnaire will also help the organization to learn whether the healthcare practitioners in the hospitals made a follow up with the clients even after they were discharged to ensure that they healed well, as well as ensure that immediate intervention was taken if their condition persisted. Besides, the organization will also learn whether the practitioners involved the family of the patient in ensuring that they cared for the patient, even after being discharged. Also, it would help NHS determine whether the nurses and doctors have a positive interaction, including an explanation to patients of the purpose of the medications, as well as showing interpersonal skills when dealing with the patients. Besides, it would also help determine whether the doctors and nurses debriefed the patients of how they could feel once they took medications, such as anesthetics, or after an operation. Besides, the survey questionnaire will also be essential in helping NHS determine whether there were enough nurses and doctors among other personnel that took care of the patients needs adequately and whether the organization needed more practitioners in the hospitals.

For this reason, the information collected would be beneficial to NHS as it would make decisions on whether it should increase its personnel to promote more effectiveness, whether it could subject the practitioners in the hospitals to internal training about interpersonal skills, how it would eliminate delays in the emergency departments, as well as other operations areas. Also, NHS would determine whether it required training its staff on emotional intelligence, thereby allowing them to connect with the patients appropriately. These aspects would increase the overall effectiveness of the NHS hospitals, thereby increasing the satisfaction levels of the patients.

It can be concluded that the survey questionnaire was important for the organization as it surveyed the overall effectiveness of the organization, including governance, performance levels, risk mitigation, technology, as well as workforce excellence, which are all important in assessing the efficiency of an organization (Quantisoft, n,d). However, various recommendations can be effected upon the redesign of the questionnaire. Firstly questionnaires should be short, but the NHS one was long and had over 70 questions, which can subsequently reduce the morale if not deter the respondent from filling the questionnaire (Brace, 2008). Additionally, it is recommended that upon redesign, the questionnaires should be limited to at most 30. Also, the questionnaires, as Brace (2008) posits, should include the various stakeholders involved, but the NHS one only covered in patients. For this reason, it can also be recommended that when redesigning the questionnaire, it should also include doctors and nurses because they are the ones responsible for providing care.

References

Brace, I. (2008). Questionnaire design: How to plan, structure and write survey material for effective market research. London, UK: Kogan Page Publishers.

Quantisoft (n.d). Holistic Organizational Effectiveness Surveys. Retrieved from http://www.quantisoft.com/Industries/OrganizationalEffectiveness.htm

NHS (2013). Inpatient questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.nhssurveys.org/Filestore/Inpatient_2013/IP13_Core_Questionnaire_v1.pdf