Hospital staff across Canada are so overworked right now that they’re not able to keep up with all of their patient’s needs and demands. In turn, people naturally feel like they aren’t getting reliable care or enough information on their health from hospitals, causing patient hostility to form.
Yet, the technology needed to give patients more control and transparency over their healthcare plans and conditions exists, which can offer relief to both nurses and patients.
Canadian Healthcare Technology even highlights that 68% of Canadians feel that smart technology has the power to keep or improve their health. There are a wide variety of digital tools and engagement features available that can help to relieve patient anger — hospitals just need to invest in the right ones and start rolling them out.
However, most hospitals haven’t started providing patients with the digital connection or engagement that they want yet. This means that patients are often unsatisfied with hospital care, leading to more interruptions, questions and complaints to already-exhausted staff.
In fact, the Canadian Institute for Health Information reported that 34% of patients weren’t totally satisfied with their experiences in hospitals long before the pandemic caused hospital conditions to deteriorate.
Examine how hospitals can meet the needs of patients without overexerting staff, replacing patients’ frequent, negative interactions with productive and positive ones:
Understanding the Urgent Need for Smart Hospital Rooms
It’s no secret that the healthcare system in Canada is already at its breaking point, and unsatisfied patients continue to add pressure to fragile processes and exhausted staff.
“The system is grappling with nursing and staff shortages against a massive backlog of hundreds of thousands of surgeries that were cancelled due to the pandemic, and that will likely cost billions and years to clear,” states Sharon Kirkley, who covers medicine and health as a Senior Writer at the National Post. “[Plus,] Canada has fewer intensive care beds available per capita than most other countries in the developed world.”
With an average of 1.95 acute care hospital beds per 1000 people, people are growing frustrated by painfully long hospital wait times. Even after patients finally manage to secure a hospital bed, they still aren’t given the proper resources to have their needs met, feel less anxious or get enough information about their conditions and treatment plans.
The majority of hospital rooms in Canada simply aren’t designed to meet every need of every patient; they’re set up just to keep them alive and healthy.
Nurses and other healthcare staff are also so short on time that they can’t possibly answer patient questions as soon as they come up or keep them entertained.
To improve the quality of patient experiences and limit the number of disruptions to staff, hospital leaders can start weaving smart, interactive technologies into patient rooms. That way, the burden of managing patient requests and inquiries can be greatly reduced while sparking faster, more impactful interactions with patients.
Shaping Higher-Quality Patient Interactions: Your Partner in Success
Interactive smart rooms have the power to create meaningful experiences that reduce patient confusion and frustration in hospitals — which can ultimately save staff members time and energy.
That’s why GetWellNetwork technology — delivered by PX Solutions — has been incredibly successful in improving the quality of patient interactions and outcomes for hospitals.
With Get Well solutions, hospitals can give patients control over their environments and access to personalized plans around their care through a user-friendly interface. Facilities using this smart technology are also able to remove communication barriers between patients and staff.
The result?
Hospitals equipped with Get Well tech have seen patient satisfaction scores increase by 30%.
For instance, GetWell Loop helps patients send their questions and get updates from the right staff members digitally and in real time. This tool has been proven to direct up to 67% of patient questions to non-clinical staff, offering patients and their families faster responses while saving nurses and doctors from dealing with low-quality patient interactions.
By prioritizing the needs of patients through Get Well technology, hospital executives and nursing leaders can better engage people and amplify the positive impact of patient care, leading to happier, healthier patients and fewer readmissions.
For more information on how Get Well and PX Solutions can transform the quality of patient and staff experiences at your hospital, reach out to a representative here.