20 Things you can ask Patients in a Mobile Survey App
There are millions of people who are visiting doctors at clinics or hospitals seeking medical aid, this very moment. Being a healthcare provider, imagine what you could do with all the data about your patients’ health issues, causes, symptoms, medicinal histories and treatments; more so their feedback about your services.
So whether it is at the help desk while your patients wait for their appointment or it is by a nurse while they are under post-operative care, a survey form with relevant questions always makes sense. But also, understand this that when people visit a doctor, they are in no mood to write in all those typical, time-taking, pen & paper forms, which further exhaust them.
The best possible way thus, would be a form that can be responded to using something like a phone or tablet, with questions like:
Near Check-in when an Appointment Seeker or Outer Patient gets a ticket:
- Is this your first visit to the Centre? A simple Yes/ No Question, based on which other questions may appear.
- (If Yes) Where did you learn about the services of the centre from? Multiple options like from Newspaper Advert., TVC, Friend’s Recommendation, Word-of-mouth, Known-Person working at the centre, Other (Specify).
- (If No) How often have you visited the centre in the past year? Ask to select one of the given options: Once, Twice, Thrice, More than three times or I come here every few weeks for consultation or treatment.
- Which Doctor(s) have you consulted in the past? Simple Text field to take in responses in detail would do the job.
- Are you carrying the Test Reports or Reports from your previous consultations? Yes or No Answer.
- What is the reason for your visit to the centre today? The possible responses like ‘Medical Advice’, ‘Injury/Sickness’, ‘Emergency’, etc. can be given in a drop-down menu.
- Which Department would you want to see? A list of options to choose from like ‘ENT’, ‘Dermatology’ etc. (Another way can be to ask the problem that the patient is facing like in ‘Eyes’ or ‘Skin’ and depending on the response, the field of Concerned Department can be auto-filled).
Near Doctor’s Room when the Patient is waiting in the Dept. to meet the Doctor:
- Have you undergone any Surgery/Operation in the recent past? If yes please specify the details.
- Any major health concerns faced by your Parents? Response to be mentioned in detail.
- Has anyone in your family faced the same Health Issue as yours? If yes please specify the relation.
- Have you faced the same problem before? A simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question.
- If yes, what medications/ aid were used? This may require a text field for the patient to type in the response (with the help of a typing assistant or word predictor to make it quicker and easier).
- Any allergies/ reactions? Some common allergy reasons may be given but the best way can be a type-in line with word prediction.
- Which of the following do you use on a regular basis? List of things like ‘Alcohol’, ‘Cigarettes’, etc. can be given and this type of question can accept multiple responses.
Near Check-out when the Patient is ready to leave after post-operative care:
- On a scale of 1- 5 (1 being lowest, 5 being highest), how would you rate the overall convenience for taking appointments, reaching the centre and availing services from the helper staff? This type of question can be typically given with a drag tool on a line mentioned with the numbers.
- How would you grade the overall quality of your medicines/ treatment, food & stay? The responder can be made to select one of the given answers like ‘Highly Satisfactory’, ‘Satisfactory’ or ‘Not Satisfactory’.
- How would you rate the knowledge of the Physicians at the Hospital? This type requires that the patient is given the freedom to select the number of stars he/she wants to fill from the given blank stars as his/ her response.
- How would you rate the hospitality & cooperation of the Staff at the Hospital? Answer can be recorded in form of number of hearts too.
- Would you say your experience was ‘Value for Money’? A number of smiley faces given with or without relevant expressions such as a happy face with a wide smile [:D] saying ‘I feel absolutely happy about both the costs & my treatment’, a normal smiling face [:)] saying ‘I feel that my treatment was good but the costs could have been a little lower’ or a sad face [:(] saying ‘I don’t feel so good about my health yet and the big bills were a big turn off too’.
- How likely are you to suggest the Hospital to any of your friends/ family? Options like ‘Absolutely’, ‘Most likely’, ‘Maybe’, ‘I don’t Know’ or ‘Never’.
One of the most obvious advantages of using tablets (phones can be used too, but given that the amount of data being collected is going to be huge, dedicated tablet PCs would be the much obvious choice) over typical pen & paper forms is that you can collect as much information as a traditional pen & pear form, but only in lesser time and with bare minimum efforts.
Another major advantage can be that unlike the usual forms, these tablets can be made available to patients with no personal assistance required to fill the responses (at the most a detailed description about answering a question can itself be used as a note attached with the question).
