What Leaders Begin to See
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This work begins with conversation, but it doesn’t stay there.
As leaders and teams co-design how work happens together, new patterns begin to emerge in both the daily experience and in the results that follow.​​​
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Case Overview
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Organization
Large academic medical center serving a diverse urban population.
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Opportunity
Patient experience performance, particularly in nurse communication measures, had remained below desired levels. Leaders identified an opportunity to strengthen how communication behaviors consistently showed up in everyday patient and family interactions.
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Focus of the Work
Improve reliability of nurse communication behaviors across inpatient care areas through leadership alignment and frontline co-design.
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Participating Areas
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Medical-surgical units
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Women’s services
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Neonatal ICU
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Adult ICU
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Emergency department
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Inpatient dialysis
How the Change Shows Up Over Time
The work began in early 2025 with leadership alignment and frontline co-design. Because patient experience reporting includes a lag, the first signals in the data appeared in the reporting cycles that followed. The work included teams across inpatient nursing areas, including medical-surgical, women’s services, neonatal, adult ICU, emergency department, and inpatient dialysis.
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January 2025
Work begins. Leaders align around experience priorities, and frontline teams participate in co-design conversations to shape communication behaviors that fit daily clinical workflows.
March–April 2025
First signals appear in the reported data. Previously declining nurse communication scores have stabilized and begun trending upward.
Within the 2025 reporting year
Sustained improvement across several communication measures as the practices take hold in daily care.
What the numbers showed
Improvements in patient experience measures related to how nurses listen, explain, and show courtesy and respect.
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Reported HCAHPS results reflect the inpatient units included in public reporting:
medical-surgical, women’s services, and adult ICU.
HCAHPS
Nurse Communication Domain
70.5 77.7
January 2025-November 2025
Improvement across the nurse communication domain as leaders and teams co-designed
how key communication behaviors show up in daily care.
Nurses listen carefully
70.8 76.7
January 2025-November 2025
Nurses Explain
65.0 79.5
January 2025-November 2025
Nurses Courtsey & Respect
75.7 76.7
January 2025-November 2025
These results reflect what can happen when leaders slow down, engage teams in the work, and focus on the communication behaviors that shape the patient experience.
We’ll talk through what this could look like in your setting.
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