Watch as Dorothy Sisneros, Partner & SVP, Client Services, Language of Caring discusses the struggle to maintain accountability when leaders fail to hard-wire patient experience best practices with effective accountability. In this Beryl Institute Patient Experience (PX) Learning Bite, Dorothy shares six keys to achieving strong accountability among healthcare teams and leaders in order to create an exceptional patient, family and staff experience.
Match your practice’s extraordinary reputation for excellence in clinical care with an equally extraordinary reputation for legendary patient experiences through the Language of Caring. Communication plays a critical role as patients and families ‘shop’ for health care. An Employee Guide introduces the patient-centered focus to new employees, and offers communication House Rules to improve health outcomes, inspire patient loyalty, and create a better work environment. Message to employees: “You ARE our practice…We are the care YOU give.”
Healthcare workers want to provide the best patient-centered care and service. But no-one is perfect: we make mistakes, are sometimes rude or unaccommodating. If we are unaware of less-than-ideal behavior, if it is ignored and tolerated, if no one intervenes, it becomes normalized. These behaviors may fall in a “gray area”—they are tolerated because they are occasional, or because we have mixed feelings about them and about the possibility of addressing them. But accepting such behaviors lowers our standards for care and service excellence. This negatively impacts our work culture. We fail to keep our promises to the people we serve, and to each other.
You CAN take action to raise standards and achieve greatness in family and patient-centered care. By identifying normalized negative behaviors and communicating expectations for improvement, you can support managers and staff in replacing below-par behaviors with top-quality ones.
Staff can lessen anxiety and resentment by keeping patients informed, explaining the reason for the delay and providing diversions.
You know from experience that when a person is worried, sick, pressured, nervous, in pain, bored, uncomfortable, hungry, restless, or fearful, every minute of waiting feels like an hour. Waiting for appointments, waiting to see the doctor, waiting for results, waiting for a callback, waiting for an answer, waiting, waiting, waiting—all kinds of waits irritate and stir resentment toward the care team. Just eavesdrop in a waiting room for a few minutes, and you’ll hear, “They think their time is more valuable than mine! They have no respect for my time!”
Alas, what are we to do?
