“Our employees are our most valuable asset” is often overheard in organizations, and thriving organizations supply plenty of evidence to prove it. These days, smart leaders embrace going beyond the rhetoric and commit to taking strategic steps to inspire, strengthen and appreciate employee engagement. For years, I have helped myself and other leaders remember the foundation and guidelines for creating an environment of engagement in an easily remembered acronym—C.A.R.I.N.G.
A call to action for leaders in healthcare and patient experience to develop a strategy to address how we can help physicians and APCs of different generations and levels of experience feel valued and recapture or sustain the joy of medical practice.
It’s 2 am and there’s loud talking at the nurses’ station. Marty realizes she and her coworkers must be disturbing patients. She lowers her own voice. Is Marty doing enough?
Many of us spearhead strategies to create a consistently exceptional and healing patient and family experience. We identify best practices and implement them with gusto. We give our all to launching and sustaining initiatives.
That’s great. And it’s not enough.
We have to engage in more than tactics that feel exciting, appealing, and heartwarming. We have to do what is called for even when it feels scary, awkward, or unnatural.
The patient experience is increasingly important in people’s choice of healthcare providers. There is no longer tolerance for a facility that excels at healing but lacks empathy and compassion toward patients. Patients want to feel well holistically, not just symptomatically. Because in today’s competitive market, patients compare healthcare to other service industries, a healthcare facility needs to couple clinical expertise with service that matches or exceeds hospitality industries. Healthcare leaders have to accept this change. There are no exemptions.
