Meet your surgical team: The impact of a resident-led quality improvement project on patient satisfaction

Background: Patients often have an incomplete understanding of the levels of training and roles of the various surgical providers in teaching hospitals, leading to patient confusion and dissatisfaction. Methods: Pre-intervention discharge surveys were administered to gastrointestinal surgery inpatients (10/2016–02/2017) to evaluate sentiments regarding their surgical team. During the intervention period (02/2017–05/2017), patients at admission received “facesheets” containing team member profiles, photos, training level, and roles. These patients were evaluated using the survey, and pre- and post-intervention scores compared. Results: 153 pre- and 100 post-intervention surveys were collected. There was a significant increase in patients reporting it was important to know the surgical team members and that they knew team member roles (p ≤ 0.05). Scores in every domain of the satisfaction survey improved in the post-intervention period, although not reaching statistical significance. Conclusions: Improving how patients perceive their interactions with their surgical team has implications on patient satisfaction and hospital quality metrics.