Healthcare consultant Dr. Graham Lowe says many hospitals have taken steps to cultivate a highly engaged workforce, expecting that higher engagement translates into better patient care, but indicates that there's no systematic evidence from Canadian hospitals that connects these big data points. Lowe's study compared results from 34 Ontario hospitals that conducted NRC Health's Inpatient Experience Survey (IES) and Employee Experience Survey (EES), focusing on two questions:
- Overall, how would you rate the care you received at the hospital? (Poor, Fair, Good, Very good, Excellent); and
- Would you recommend this hospital to your friends and family? (Yes definitely, Yes probably, No).
Lowe compared the hospital mean scores for the two patient satisfaction items to five hospital employee experience measures, focussing on:
- A 6-item engagement scale;
- Rate hospital as place to work;
- Can trust the organization;
- Work unit provides top-quality patient care; and
- Patient-centred work environment scale.
Lowe found positive relationships between both measures, meaning that "the more engaged employees are, the more positively they rate their hospital as a place to work; the more they trust their organization, the higher the perceived quality of patient care delivered by their unit; and the more they consider their work environment to be patient-centred, the more likely it is that inpatients would recommend the hospital to family or friends and highly rate the quality of care they received."