Best questions for patient survey about emergency department experience

Here are some of the best questions for a patient survey about emergency department experience, plus practical tips for crafting them. You can build your own conversational survey in seconds with Specific and start gathering insights fast.

Best open-ended questions for patient survey about emergency department experience

Open-ended questions let patients describe their experiences in their own words. They’re especially useful when you want rich, detailed feedback, or to uncover themes you might have missed. These questions capture nuance, reveal unmet needs, and help you understand the real sources of satisfaction (or frustration). Research highlights that communication, staff empathy, and clarity are top factors shaping emergency department satisfaction, making open feedback invaluable for meaningful improvement [1][3].

1. Can you describe your overall experience during your visit to the emergency department?

2. What aspects of care did you find most helpful or reassuring while you were in the ED?

3. Were there any challenges or difficulties you faced while getting care? Please explain.

4. How did the staff communicate with you about your condition and treatment? Any memorable moments, positive or negative?

5. What could be improved to make future visits to the emergency department better for patients like you?

6. If you experienced a long wait time, how was it explained to you, and how did you feel about it?

7. Can you share any specific examples where staff showed empathy or compassion toward you or other patients?

8. Did you feel your privacy and dignity were respected during your visit? Please elaborate.

9. If you needed medication or tests, how easy was it to access them? Were there any issues?

10. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your emergency department experience that we haven’t asked?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for patient survey about emergency department experience

Single-select multiple-choice questions are ideal for uncovering trends and quantifying common experiences. They’re perfect when you need quick, easy-to-analyze data or want to guide people into open-ended follow-ups. Sometimes, it’s less intimidating for patients to choose from clear options before reflecting further. These structured questions help you spot where you excel and where improvements are needed across high-impact areas like staff professionalism and wait times, which are proven drivers of patient satisfaction [2].

Question: How would you rate the clarity of information provided to you during your ED visit?

• Very clear

• Somewhat clear

• Not clear

• Not sure

Question: Which aspect of your emergency department experience was the most challenging?

• Wait times

• Staff communication

• Access to medications or tests

• Finding help or directions

• Other

Question: How satisfied were you with the professionalism of the ED staff (doctors, nurses, support staff)?

• Very satisfied

• Satisfied

• Neutral

• Dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

When to follow up with "why?" Use a "why" follow-up when you want to dig into the reasoning behind a patient’s choice. For example, if someone rates staff professionalism as "dissatisfied", ask: “Can you describe what made you feel dissatisfied with the staff’s professionalism?” Open-text follow-ups turn numbers into actionable stories.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include an "Other" option when you expect that some patients’ experiences might not fit predefined responses. This lets people surface new or unexpected issues—which you can then explore further with a follow-up question to reveal surprising insights you may not have anticipated.

Using NPS questions for emergency department experience

Net Promoter Score (NPS) asks patients how likely they are to recommend your emergency department to others. It’s a simple but powerful way to gauge trust and loyalty, and it works well for healthcare because it taps into overall sentiment. NPS scores correlate with patient satisfaction and help pinpoint what’s driving those feelings—critical for quality improvement in high-stakes environments like the ED. Try creating an NPS-based patient survey to see exactly where you stand and how to improve.

The power of follow-up questions

Asking follow-up questions in your patient survey bridges the gap between multiple-choice data and truly actionable insights. Smart, tailored follow-ups let us uncover details that static forms miss, which is even more important given the complexity and emotion in emergency care feedback [4]. Specific’s automatic AI follow-up capability lets the survey adapt in real time—so if a patient gives a vague answer, the AI asks a relevant, clarifying question, just as an expert interviewer would.

• Patient: The nurse was helpful, but I was confused about what was happening.

• AI follow-up: Could you tell us more about what was confusing or what information you wish had been clearer?

How many follow-ups to ask? In most cases, 2–3 well-crafted follow-up questions are enough to gather full context—without overwhelming your respondents. Specific lets you define maximum follow-up depth or skip ahead if you already have what you need.

This makes it a conversational survey—one that actually feels like a chat, building comfort and trust as you collect richer answers.

AI survey analysis is effortless, even for long, messy open-text responses. With Specific’s AI-powered response summaries, you can filter by theme, dig into outliers, and get clear priorities in minutes—not hours or days.

These AI-powered follow-up questions are still new, and they really change the game. Try generating your own conversational survey and see how much deeper you can go.

How to use prompts for brainstorming patient survey questions

If you want to quickly come up with meaningful survey questions, try using ChatGPT or another AI with smart prompting. Here’s how to get the best results:

Start by asking for a batch of relevant questions:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Patient survey about Emergency Department Experience.

For better results, give more context—describe your role, your goals, and the situation:

I'm a quality improvement lead at a regional hospital. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions for our patient survey about Emergency Department Experience. Focus on communication, wait times, staff empathy, and ease of getting information.

Next, organize your ideas. Ask the AI to group questions by category, making it easier to spot gaps or overlaps:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Finally, drill into the most valuable topics. For example:

Generate 10 questions for the categories "Staff Empathy" and "Wait Times".

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey goes way beyond boring web forms. Instead of static lists of questions, it feels like a chat—adapting as the patient responds, following up naturally, and showing empathy. This approach replicates the warmth of a face-to-face interview but is infinitely scalable, faster, and less labor-intensive. AI-powered survey generators like Specific bring this to life by dynamically building questions, saving hours of manual setup, and keeping participants engaged.

Why use AI for patient surveys? You get in-depth feedback faster, with less work, and can support multiple languages, richer context, and more actionable insights than ever. With AI survey examples and conversational formats, feedback isn’t just easier to collect—it’s more accurate because people naturally open up.

Specific offers the best-in-class user experience for conversational, AI-powered surveys, making feedback smooth for everyone—creators and patients alike. See our how-to guide for more tips on survey creation.

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