Introduction

In today's healthcare industry, it is important for nurses to provide quality care to patients. In order to do so, nurses must be able to access patients' medical histories and track changes in their health over time. As a result, medical surveys for nurses are an essential tool that helps both doctors and nurses determine how they can better improve the quality of care they provide. If you're designing medical surveys for nurses, we've got just the right post for you. Read on to find six tips to keep in mind when designing these surveys.

1. Internationalisation

Internationalisation is the process of designing and developing products, services and marketing communications that can be easily translated into other languages. In this way, companies can expand their reach to new markets.

Depending on the target audience, you might want to use a language that's understood by nurses in your country but not so common elsewhere. For example, if you're creating medical surveys for nurses in Finland, consider launching them in the country's native language. You could also opt for a language that is spoken by many people worldwide (English). It's important to make sure that you don't make the survey too difficult or easy for potential respondents.

If the survey is too difficult, people may not be able to complete it. If it's too easy, respondents may get bored and stop answering questions halfway through. It's also important that you provide a space for respondents to write their answers in their own language or dialect. This way, they'll feel like they're being heard and understood, which will make them more likely to participate.

2. Clear questions

• Keep questions clear and simple. The language of your survey should be clear and familiar to the target audience. In addition, you should avoid jargon and technical terms wherever possible.
• Use headlines to guide users. Headlines are an effective way to help respondents navigate through the survey. These headlines make it easier for them to answer questions in a logical way.
• Use bulleted lists whenever appropriate, so that respondents can easily scan through the questions without having to read every word on each page. Having bulleted lists gives you another advantage when creating medical surveys for nurses. Respondents can tend to glaze over questions if they have too much text on one page (which is often a result of using more than one font size).
• Use visual cues to help respondents navigate your survey. Your survey should have clear visual cues to indicate which questions are required and which are optional. In addition, medical surveys for nurses should have highlighted fields where respondents can enter their responses.

This helps improve the user experience and makes it easier for respondents to answer questions. In addition, keep in mind the following two points when designing medical surveys for nurses:

• Use clear, simple language. When writing your survey, use clear and familiar language that does not have any technical terms or jargon that may confuse respondents.
• Use plain language, but don’t be afraid to have some fun with it. For example, use a few words that are familiar and easy to understand in your survey questions. This can help respondents feel more relaxed and comfortable while answering questions and increase their willingness to participate in your research study.

3. Compatibility

The design of a medical survey should be compatible with the smartphone, operating system, and different web browsers. In addition to this, it should also be compatible with the screen size. If you are designing for Android devices, make sure that all of your links are clickable. In addition, you should check that they work across different versions of Webkit browsers (Safari on iOS devices). When you are designing a survey, make sure that you have taken into account all of the different ways in which it can be accessed. For more information on compatibility on mobile devices, check out this article.

4. Testing

Testing is the most important step in the design of your survey. You’ll want to test with a small sample of nurses who represent your target population. Additionally, you'll want to make sure that the survey is clear, easy to use, and compatible with mobile devices.

Once you’ve designed your survey, you should run it through a pilot test with a small sample of nurses. The purpose of this test is not to get responses back from the nurse who takes the survey, which will come later, but rather to ensure that the survey is clear and easy to use. Additionally, think about the length of your survey. Sometimes, the goal can be to have a survey that can be completed in five minutes or less, while still providing the data you need. On the other hand, if it's a complex B2B healthcare project, then the length of the survey may be longer. Learn more about medical B2B surveys in ‘What is a Medical B2B survey and why do you need it?’ You should also test your survey on mobile devices if you plan to distribute it via an app. For more on survey testing, check out Qualtrics’ blog post about the topic.

5. Multiple choice vs. open-ended questions

When designing surveys, choosing between the optimal mix of multiple-choice vs. open-ended questions can be difficult. Below are some tips to evaluate multiple-choice or open-ended questions:

Advantages of Multiple choice questions:

• Are quicker to answer
• Require less mental effort than open-ended questions and are therefore more easily completed by your participants
• Allows you to analyse data quickly and accurately, which makes them ideal for large surveys that have many participants.

Advantages of Open-Ended Questions:

• Allow participants to provide more detailed answers when answering a question, which can be helpful if you want to understand their experiences in more detail or gain greater insight into the topic being researched. Example: Please describe your experience with [x]. It’s also worth noting that there are many different types of open-ended questions, so as well as asking general questions you could also ask specific ones such as “how did it feel?” or “what were your thoughts about…?
• In addition to the above, it’s also worth remembering that there are many different types of questions that you can ask participants in your survey. For example, you could ask them if they agree or disagree with something or whether they have a particular experience (e.g. “Have you ever had an issue with [x]?”).

For further information on open-ended and multiple-choice questions, check out Customer Think’s blog post. The post goes into what are feedback loops and how brands can close them using MCQs and open-ended questions. 

6. Consider designing medical surveys for nurses on smartphones as well as laptops

You know your nurses are using their smartphones to complete the survey, so make sure you design it to be mobile-friendly. Make sure the survey is compatible with all mobile devices. You don’t want nurses to be frustrated looking at a page that won’t load or crashes in their browser because you didn't test on different devices. Test the survey on different mobile devices and browsers before sending it out; even if they use iOS or Android, there's no guarantee they're using the same browser version as you! Use clear questions and simple language so that even someone who isn't familiar with medical terminology can understand them.

In addition, make sure they're easy for respondents to answer quickly too. Make sure the survey is easy to fill out. The survey should be short, but still, cover the information you need. If your nurses are using their smartphones to complete the survey, make sure you design it to be mobile-friendly. Make sure the survey is compatible with all mobile devices.

Conclusion

We can't stress enough the importance of correctly designing surveys for nurses. They are in a unique position to offer valuable insight into how to improve patient care and satisfaction, but only if their opinions are properly represented through medical surveys. We hope you found these five tips helpful when designing your own survey so that you get the most out of this process.