Welcome to Patient Experience Education Resources Page
This page was created by the Patient Experience Task Force as a resource for Emergency Medicine educators looking for information, materials and support to provide training to their residents and students.
Patient satisfaction (PS) testing began as a mechanism to evaluate quality of care. While now more frequently recognized by the name of the company he founded, Irwin Press began studying PS surveying as a means of identifying the effect of cultural and personal beliefs on healthcare provision. His movement took off when PS became a quality metric recognized by CMS, with the adoption of the initial HCAHPS survey in 2002. Over the next decade, the regulatory landscape had codified PS into a regulatory stick that can affect the entire spectrum from hospital systems to individual physicians.
There are several criticisms of the movement, including important methodological and outcomes based arguments. While significant controversy may exist on the evaluative part of patient experience, patient satisfaction correlates to patient compliance, is inversely associated with rates of litigation, and can help minimize suffering, a core tenet of medicine.
Controversy aside, what is clear is that education around PS is necessary given the current landscape. Through the work of the PETF, it has also become clear that there is opportunity for EM residency programs to enhance PS education.
We have designed this site as a set of resources for residency leadership and others to use to add to their curricula. Included are a content validated, free patient satisfaction survey, called ‘BOOST’, lectures, FOAM and simulation materials as well as a large reference list.