DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Improving the Performance of Nurses in Upper Egypt using the Client-Provider Communication (CPC) Rating Form

 

Management Sciences for Health (MSH), a not-for-profit non-governmental international health organization, is implementing a USAID funded project: Improving the Performance of Nurses (IPN) in Upper Egypt. The goal of the project is to improve the quality of health care delivered in hospitals in rural Egypt. The LDP empowers nurses to improve the quality and accessibility of health services in three areas: infection control, basic nursing care and client-provider communication (CPC).


From September thru December 2010, I conducted my field practicum on the IPN Project in Aswan, Egypt. In collaboration with the MSH Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Advisor, I conducted research on techniques to improve treatment adherence and health outcomes and reviewed their Patient Satisfaction Survey (PSS) as a tool to measure CPC in hospitals in Upper Egypt.  In spite of the fact that CPC is critical to quality improvement, in our review we found that only a small fraction of IPN nurses’ quality improvement projects focused on CPC as compared to infection control and basic nursing care.


Because high quality interpersonal communication skills are known to improve treatment adherence and health outcomes, CPC is a competency of equal importance to clinical skills and medical knowledge.  Having a tool to accurately measure CPC provides a mechanism for nursing staff to identify areas for improvement in this focus area.


Our conclusion was that the PSS was an insufficient proxy measure of CPC.  Consequently, we decided to develop a better instrument for measuring CPC. This paper analyzes existing assessment tools for measuring CPC, selects appropriate and useful elements from them, describes a new tool to assess CPC based on pilot testing, and recommends ongoing use of this new tool in the LDP quality improvement program.


Key Words: client provider communication, interpersonal communication, nurses, Egypt, quality improvement, patient centered care


CE Elena Richardson 1May11.docx

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.