1 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A R C H 2 0 1 7
A
ccreditation surveys
are always a chal-
lenge, especially
when it's tough to get staff
members to focus on all the
pieces they need to know.
Fortunately, I've figured out a
way to help us sail through
them with high marks.
I had always given staff members handouts with various tips and poli-
cies when we had a survey upcoming. But it was pretty clear they weren't
really reading them. Whenever the time came to actually discuss them in
staff meetings, I seemed to be the only one doing any discussing.
Figuring a carrot would work better than a stick, I decided to make a
constructive game out of it. I assigned everyone a partner and began ask-
ing survey-related questions from the handouts at every meeting, with
each question valued at a theoretical dollar figure. Then I awarded tokens
corresponding with the various dollar amounts to each pair that wrote
down the correct answer. I also changed the teams every week, so no
one could just depend on his or her partner to have all the right answers.
After 5 weeks, I let the top 3 teams "shop" for prizes — like gift cards, a
paid day off, a half-day off, extra time for lunch and other small gifts —
each valued at a specific amount.
It was well worth it. People suddenly got very interested, and not only
did we get a perfect score on our most recent survey, we also aced a sur-
prise CMS survey a short time later.
Lynn Rhea, RN, BSN bacefun@hotmail.com
Baltimore (Md.) Ambulatory Center for Endoscopy
Accreditation Quiz Game Helped Us Ace Our Survey
• SURVEY SAYS? The big prize came when we aced our accreditation and CMS surveys.
Ideas Work
That
