This article will guide you step by step on how to create a patient survey about communication with nurses. With Specific, you can build your survey in seconds—no hassle, just results.
Steps to create a survey for patients about communication with nurses
If you want to save time, just click this link to generate a survey with Specific. With AI-powered tools like Specific’s survey generator, building high-quality patient surveys is effortless and lightning fast. Here’s all it takes:
Tell what survey you want.
Done.
Honestly, you don’t even need to read further unless you’re curious. The AI uses expert-backed logic to create great patient surveys, and it automatically asks follow-up questions, digging for insights you’d otherwise miss in manual forms or generic templates.
Why do patient surveys about communication with nurses matter?
Patient recognition surveys and feedback forms play a huge role in understanding and improving healthcare quality. Let’s start with the facts: Nursing care—especially nurses’ courtesy, respect, and careful listening—accounts for much of overall patient satisfaction [1]. In other words, if you’re not running these targeted surveys, you’re missing direct, actionable signals on where patient experiences succeed or fall short.
Many organizations skip or delay these, hoping general feedback will surface pain points. The reality is, effective communication and clear explanations from healthcare providers strongly influence patient satisfaction [1]. If you never ask, you’ll never know where communication breaks down, leading to missed opportunities for improvement and diminished trust.
Benefits of patient surveys on this topic go beyond service tweaks: you uncover unmet needs, ensure patients feel truly heard, and get early warning signs about systemic issues. Skipping these is like flying blind—you risk making decisions on assumptions, not evidence.
For more on the importance and benefits of patient recognition surveys, check out our deep-dive guide.
What makes a good survey on communication with nurses?
Not every survey delivers useful insights. The best surveys for communication with nurses use:
Clear, unbiased questions that don’t nudge patients toward specific responses
A conversational tone, encouraging honest, natural answers
Mobile-friendly formats and strong focus on privacy
As studies suggest, avoiding leading or biased questions and testing your survey design first boosts both the quantity and the quality of responses [3]. That’s your mark of success—you want more people to answer and provide deeper, more thoughtful input.
Bad Practices | Good Practices |
|---|---|
Asking “Did your nurse do everything perfectly?” | Asking “How would you describe your nurse’s communication?” |
Complicated jargon | Clear, simple language |
No opportunity for followup | Conversational followup questions |
The end goal is always the same: high-quality feedback you can act on, with participation from as many patients as possible.
Question types and examples for a patient survey about communication with nurses
Great survey design means asking the right mix of question types. Here’s how we approach this—and why:
Open-ended questions let patients speak freely, unlocking insights you don’t get from checkboxes. Use them when you want authentic stories, personal examples, or details behind ratings. For example:
“Can you describe a recent experience where a nurse communicated especially well or poorly with you?”
“What could nurses do to make communication easier for you during your care?”
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you need to measure or compare — use them for standardized responses you can easily analyze. For example:
“How clearly did nurses explain your care plan?”
Very clearly
Somewhat clearly
Not very clearly
Not at all
NPS (Net Promoter Score) question is the gold standard if you want to benchmark experience or compare teams/locations. Use it to get a quick read and trigger tailored follow-ups for promoters and detractors. Want to instantly generate a tailored NPS survey? It’s just a click away.
“On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend our nursing team to a friend or family member?”
Followup questions to uncover "the why": Sometimes a first reply is vague—or there’s untapped context behind a score. Follow-ups dig deeper, like:
“You mentioned some confusion about your medication. Could you share more about what wasn’t clear?”
These follow-ups make your data richer and reduce guesswork. For more ideas and expert tips, explore our complete guide on the best questions for patient surveys about communication with nurses.
What is a conversational survey?
Traditional surveys often feel like forms—you answer, submit, and that’s it. A conversational survey is more like a natural chat: question, response, followup, all in a conversational flow. This format not only keeps respondents engaged but also surfaces the underlying “why” behind their answers.
With AI survey generators like Specific, there’s no manual question-building or logic-juggling. The AI designs the survey, handles the branching, and adapts in real-time to patients’ answers—saving massive amounts of time and mental effort. Here’s a quick comparison:
Manual survey | AI-generated survey |
|---|---|
Manual drafting and editing | Chat-based creation—AI builds questions for you |
Static questions, no followup | Smart, dynamic followups for deeper insights |
Difficult to analyze open text | AI summarizes and distills key insights instantly |
Why use AI for patient surveys? The simple answer: you get more authentic, actionable insights in less time, and with less hassle. An AI survey example—like what you generate on Specific—automatically adapts questions, probes for clarity, and ensures a conversational pace, all tailored to healthcare needs.
Specific is designed for best-in-class conversational survey experiences, so the feedback process feels welcoming for patients and genuinely useful for teams. Want detailed step-by-step instructions? Read our guide on how to create an effective patient survey about communication with nurses.
The power of follow-up questions
You can’t get great feedback without good follow-up questions. With AI, they’re smarter and seamless—automated follow-up capability means you never miss a chance to clarify or deepen understanding.
Patient: “Sometimes explanations were unclear.”
AI follow-up: “Can you recall a specific time when a nurse’s explanation was unclear? What would have helped in that moment?”
Manual surveys often stop at vague answers. But with follow-ups (especially in healthcare surveys), you turn half-answers into rich, usable context, unlocking the “why” behind a score or opinion.
How many followups to ask? Usually, 2–3 is plenty before moving on. Specific lets you set this—so your survey feels conversational, not interrogational, and skips when the info is clear.
This makes it a conversational survey—the process becomes a meaningful two-way exchange, not cold data collection.
AI analysis of open-ended responses—Specific’s AI makes it easy to analyze all kinds of text answers, so you’re not overwhelmed by data. Dive deeper into response analysis in this guide and see how AI survey response analysis works for unstructured feedback.
Automated follow-up questions are changing surveys forever—try generating a survey and see for yourself how powerful that can be.
See this communication with nurses survey example now
Ready to get candid, actionable feedback from patients? Try it for yourself—see how fast you can create a conversational survey that uncovers genuine insights about communication with nurses. Turn your feedback into healthcare improvements—no more guessing, just clear answers.