Do you really want my feedback?

I had a routine GI procedure three weeks ago. You know the drill; “after the prep, the procedure is a piece of cake…”

That one!

I had a great experience. The results were clean and benign! The staff were friendly, the center was clean, the nurses were kind and professional and explained everything well. The doctor was personable and had an appropriate (enjoyable for me) sense of humor. Everything ran on time and my ‘competent adult’ escort got me home before lunch time – I was starving!

Life quickly returned to its ‘pre-prep’ normalcy and the procedure was a distant memory. Or so I thought…

This morning a 37-question paper survey arrived in our mail box, asking me to share my “thoughts and feelings”.

My immediate reaction of wanting to recycle this piece of ‘junk mail’ was curtailed by my morbid curiosity to re-examine this antiquated and ineffective means of gathering feedback.

Do our hospital and health system leaders really believe that this is an effective way to gather feedback about my experience of the care that I received? I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning and you’re asking me to rate the “Attractiveness of the Surgery Center” from three weeks ago.

This is absurd on so many levels!

I really don’t recall how attractive the surgery center was, nor do I really care.

I care that your staff were kind, compassionate and didn’t keep me waiting. I care that you knew who I was and did the correct procedure on me. I care that you explained what you were doing to me and that you all seem to know what each other was doing, apparently enjoyed working together, had the equipment to do your jobs safely and effectively and seemed to be committed to taking care of me as a priority.

Listen. If you really want my feedback, if you really want to know my thoughts and feelings, do what our vet does after my dogs have a visit; call me that night or the next morning. If I’m not available chat with my wife (she was the competent adult that picked me up…), trust me, she will know whether my experience with you, your facility and your caregivers was anything other than stellar.

This would also allow you to determine whether I was suffering any post-procedure discomfort or pain. That call would also be an appropriate time to ask me whether I had any questions about the procedure and you could remind me about any follow up that I needed to remember.

If you can’t afford the time for a person to make a call, then send me a text or an email with half a dozen quick questions. In fact, that might be better, then you’d have the real time data to inform any changes to your operations or any service recovery for your patients.

The 80’s called, they would like their survey back!

We can do better than this, our patients and caregivers deserve better than this!

P.s. send the pager and fax machine back too…

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