5 Tips to Create an Inclusive Survey
Now more than ever, it’s important to create an inclusive survey experience for your patients. This allows you to get the most accurate data and to ensure that they are able to respond in as much detail as possible. So how can you achieve this? Here are 7 tips to create inclusive surveys for your healthcare facility.
1. Give Context For Questions on Demographics
It’s extremely common to include demographic questions on surveys in order to get a better idea of who the patient is and so you can separate data into different categories. However, according to Zendesk, some people do not like answering these questions unless they understand how their data will be used.
For example, in order to create an inclusive survey, you may want to explain why answers such as age or gender are needed. By letting patients know that this data is to help your staff learn how they can best help different groups of people and provide the best experiences for future visits, they may be more likely to respond.
2. Think About the Wording
The words you use in a survey can sway participants in a certain direction. In order to create an accurate, inclusive survey, you need to think about the words you are using and keep the questions as unbiased as possible.
For example, think about these two questions. If you were to ask “what was the worst part of your visit?” This shines a negative light on your facility and/or doctors because the patients will be thinking of the negative aspects of their stay. However, if you were to phrase the question, “what improvements to care could be made?” the responses will lead to a positive reflection because the assumption is made that your facility is willing to look at these responses and take action to improve the quality of care.
Another important part of the wording of your survey is to not include assumptions. Do not assume that your patients are of a certain skill, education, or qualification level. Keeping the survey questions to the point and as generic as possible will provide more participants the chance to answer the question. If a participant sees a question that they feel they do not relate to or can’t understand, they may be less likely to leave an answer.
3. Create Questions that Pertain to the Patient
Although you don’t need to create an individual form for each patient, an inclusive survey is one that makes the patient feel heard. Patients want the opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences with the facility. If the questions and survey setup are positive and put the user experience first, they will feel like their concerns and questions are important.
4. Don’t Make All Questions Necessary
There may be some questions that patients don’t need to answer in order to share information about their stay. In order to increase the likelihood that patients will respond to after-care surveys, it is important to make them as easy to access as possible. This means that they should be given the option to skip questions that may not pertain to them.
The more difficult a survey is to navigate, the less likely it is that a patient will take the time to fill it out. Obviously, some questions on your survey will be necessary to determine what type of care they received, when, and their overall experience. However, giving patients the opportunity to skip long-form questions that aren’t necessary may help in the overall completion rate of your surveys.
Although it would be great if every single client gave an in-depth response to every survey, sometimes, a short response is better than none at all.
5. Review the Inclusive Survey After Submission
Finally, in order to truly make a survey inclusive, someone should be reviewing the submissions to make sure that any feedback given is heard by the proper team, doctor, or facility. Every response should be given some weight and, if needed, additional care or communication should be provided to the patient. This will ensure that more people respond to your surveys in the future and that quality feedback is given because your patients know that their voices are heard and that they will receive the care they need.
Using Notivate’s patient satisfaction surveys, you can set up alerts whenever patients use certain keywords in their responses or have any confusion about their post-care. In addition, our system allows you to quickly see the results of surveys and filter the results to understand which areas of your facility’s care need attention.
The feedback you receive from surveys is incredibly important as it can shape your patient’s care beyond the time they are in your facility. If you want to learn more about how Notivate’s platform can help you receive valuable insights into your facility, schedule a demo today.
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