360 Degree Feedback In Healthcare

Healthcare organizations have a unique set of challenges, particularly when it comes to measuring performance and understanding development needs. Some are strong at measuring clinical or functional skills. Yet few are equally adept at assessing the non-clinical skills that are so important to overall success in a healthcare organization.

360 degree feedback can play a significant role in understanding the other side of performance, those skills that are not directly tied to day-to-day, job-specific ability.

At 360 Degree.it, we provide software that enables development and appraisal based surveys. Our software is flexible to suit your needs and the industry you work in. For enquiries, be sure to contact our friendly team.

What Is 360 Degree Feedback?

360 Degree Feedback is a system or process in which employees receive confidential, anonymous feedback from the people who work around them. This typically includes the employee’s manager, peers, and direct reports. A mixture of about eight to twelve people fill out an anonymous online feedback form that asks questions covering a broad range of workplace competencies. The feedback forms include questions that are measured on a rating scale and also ask raters to provide written comments. The person receiving feedback also fills out a self-rating survey that includes the same survey questions that others receive in their forms.

Benefits of 360 Degree Feedback In Healthcare

Unique Perspective For Different Roles

In a medical clinic or hospital, there exists a chain of command and hierarchy that is necessary to ensure that medical teams can quickly and thoroughly examine, assess and treat patients. When it comes to the workplace evaluation of physicians, nurses or aides, they are usually based on clinical successes and failures, and neglect to assess soft, interpersonal skills such as bedside manner, empathy, interaction with healthcare teams, professionalism, and attentiveness to patients.

360 evaluation tools for healthcare address this issue by using multiple groups of assessors such as supervisors, peers, subordinates, allied health professionals and patients. Each assessor experiences and observes different aspects of the healthcare professional’s performance, and can provide valuable perspectives that are important to the quality and effectiveness of the care provided.

Improvements To The Quality Of Care

360 degree performance evaluations in healthcare, particularly when combined with follow-up training, can be a valuable training tool, improving both physician performance and patient care. Healthcare professionals can learn a great deal of information from their 360 degree assessment and take a proactive approach to reinforce strengths, and learn how to improve on weaknesses in areas such as patient communication, team leadership or professionalism.

Improve Patient Satisfaction

Healthcare teams have varying levels of interaction with patients. Physicians might only see a patient for a half-hour, while nurses and aides have more extensive interactions with those under their care, and experience first hand the effect that physician performance has on a patient. This is why 360 evaluation tools for healthcare are invaluable. Traditional evaluations are usually top-down with supervisors assessing the performance of physicians in their team.