Establishing an ISO 10001-based promise in inpatients care.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this paper is to explore ISO 10001:2007 in planning, designing and developing a customer satisfaction promise (CSP) intended for inpatients care.


METHODS
Through meetings and interviews with research participants, who included a program manager, unit managers and registered nurses, information about potential promises and their implementation was obtained and analyzed. A number of promises were drafted and one was finally selected to be developed as a CSP.


RESULTS
Applying the standard required adaptation and novel interpretation. Additionally, ISO 10002:2004 (Clause 7) was used to design the feedback handling activities. A promise initially chosen for development turned out to be difficult to implement, experience that helped in selecting and developing the final promise. Research participants found the ISO 10001-based method useful and comprehensible.


CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a specific health care example of how to adapt a standard's guideline in establishing customer promises. The authors show how a promise can be used in alleviating an existing issue (i.e. communication between carers and patients). The learning can be beneficial in various health care settings.


CONCLUSIONS
To the knowledge, this paper shows the first example of applying ISO 10001:2007 in a health care case. A few activities suggested by the standard are further detailed, and a new activity is introduced. The integrated use of ISO 10001:2007 and 10002:2004 is presented and how one can be "augmented" by the other is demonstrated.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman
MA
Khan
Stanislav
S
Karapetrovic
D003142:Communication; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D017053:Infection Control / Q000592:standards; D007297:Inpatients; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D016730:Program Development; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D013997:Time Factors
Customer satisfaction; Health care; ISO 10001; ISO 10002; Inpatients care; Service guarantee; Standards