While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has urged healthcare organizations across the country to change the ways they evaluate the care they provide, arguably the most important measurement the ACA highlighted is the concept of the “patient experience.”
Unfortunately, the best way to define the patient experience is up for debate, and every individual involved in a patient’s care has their own perception of which factors should be considered when assessing treatment quality.
However, among the most comprehensive investigations into the idea of patient experience was a 2014 article published in Patient Experience Journal, “Defining Patient Experience.” In this study, Wolf, et al. identified four distinct themes that practitioners—especially nurses—can use to help define and guide the patient experience.
Below is a discussion of these four elements.