Experience in using the service design in the development of nursing services in the republic of Kazakhstan

Background. Service design is the activity of planning and implementing changes in medical organizations to improve the quality of medical services. In Europe and the USA, service design is widespread in many large multidisciplinary medical centers. Study design. This article is a description of the experience. Methods. The authors described their own experience of using service design in the field of nursing in a private medical center in Astana. Results. The team from the Astana Medical University chose the topic: “increasing the level of satisfaction of patients with chronic diseases with the quality of nursing care in the organization of primary health care.” We used ready-made tools, reflecting their ideas on paper, flipcharts, posters and stickers. Direct data collection (interviewing and observation) by our team was carried out within one month. The planned number of patients and nurses was 10 people each. The interview focused on the subjective experience of the interviewed patients and nurses, revealing their beliefs, attitudes, level of trust and quality of communication with each other. Then the facilitators collected the completed forms and summed up the results. Thus, the focus of attention was shifted towards the low level of communication skills of nurses, taking into account the repeated complaints of patients about the lack of information about upcoming manipulations (tests, operations, diet, etc.), diseases in general, methods of self-care; lack of empathy and medical ethics. The new goal was aimed at increasing patient satisfaction with the communication skills of polyclinic nurses. To solve this problem, it was decided to conduct a two-hour express training among the nurses of the polyclinic to improve the communication skills of nurses by implementing the NURSE protocol. Conclusions. Service design has been applied for the first time in the healthcare industry of Kazakhstan as an innovative tool for improving patient-centered nursing care.