Patient Experience Q&A Sessions: Jim Falduto from Lincor Solutions

Strategy Institute: Okay, so just to start, give us an overview of what you do and the organizational work that you do.

Jim:  My name is Jim Falduto, I cover the Mid-West for Lincor and the way that we’re involved is we bring technology to the bedside. The patient is going to be engaged in their health care, not only just the entertainment side, but we bring the patient chart, everything happens right at the bedside, you know that the engaged patient’s going to have better outcomes, so our system will bring all that to them, they can look at their chart, they can call the nurse, so it’s just patient engagement, really.

Strategy Institute: Fantastic, and you’re involved obviously in this industry in the North West and now entering into Canada. What do you think are the major challenges that you’ve seen in the hospitals and in the clinics?

Jim: I believe the major challenge is that the way the care is delivered is centralized now so the nurses are at the nurse station. We need to drive face time in the room. So, what we’ll do is take the clinical workstation, put it in the room with this and then the nurse is in there and can just pop the screen over to the patient screen and say “Hey, here’s what we’re doing” and patient satisfaction comes when you’ve got more contact. So we can drive the physicians and the clinicians to the bedside and decentralize healthcare in the clinics.

Strategy Institute: Fantastic. And how would you describe your overall experience at the event so far?

Jim: It’s been great. I believe everybody here is at the same goal, you know everybody wants to improve the patient experience and these are all the people we want to talk to so…it’s been a great conference.

Strategy Institute: That’s perfect, Jim, thanks you so much!

To meet patient experience professionals making a difference to Canadian Healthcare be sure to check our Patient Experience conference. We have one of the strongest panel of speakers in Canada and over 200 delegates to network with.

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Engaging and empowering patients to drive patient experience

It is widely believed that patients are key to any improvements in patient experience within the healthcare environment, as well as key to care quality and efficiency too. Nothing can be improved without the initial knowledge of where the healthcare organizations are going wrong. Patients are the best source of information on what should improve; we need to ask our “customer” – it’s marketing 101.

The challenge with getting patients to direct and therefore improve patient experience in a hospital is getting them to engage in the system and explain where the roadblocks are in the first place. For this to occur, patient engagement strategies and techniques need to be put into place.

Proven patient engagement techniques:

One of the longest preferred methods of patient engagement is that of patient experience questionnaires, which can then be further supplemented by separate data that is gathered from either patient complaints or other concerns which have been reported. However, this patient engagement technique is often now replaced with one-to-one interactions with patients to gather feedback either in person or by phone.

VP, Saskatoon Health Region explains how it works for them, “We’re in a really good place, right now we have over 140 client-family advisors, resident advisors and we have 14 councils that have patients and families and clinicians together. They’re very much working councils, they don’t just sit and talk they’re doing actual projects and work. We have them everywhere from ICU council to home care we’ve just started, and we’ve just started an aboriginal people’s council because sometimes the way we structure things does not meet our immigrant or our diversity of our population and we’re seeing some great, exciting work coming out.”

New patient engagement and empowerment strategies:

Technology is playing a huge part in the development of new patient engagement strategies with bedside technologies providing education and empowerment. Shirley Fenton, Director at NIHI explains her latest project, “NIHI participated in several Canada Health Infoway Innovation projects on the development of web portals for people to help manage their care, such as chronic disease management. One of the first things we tried to get implemented in these portals were mechanisms that would engage patients. Not only patients who could and would interact with the system easily, but also those who were not able, or not inclined because of depression or other issues.”

Another recent patient engagement technique is based on social media. The use of smart phones and tablets is on the rise, so the idea of having medical apps or using text messages to communicate with patients is becoming a reality in some healthcare organizations. Increasingly, both handheld devices and kiosks are making appearances in healthcare institutes.

Critical elements of effective patient engagement:

• Providing adequate education and information is the first step towards engaging a patient; whether healthcare organizations choose to do this through technology or a more personal route.
• Involving your patient in their treatment is a logical next step, now that they have a deeper understanding of their condition and treatment; they are more likely to want to be involved in creating a good outcome.
• Consulting the patient is essential to achieving lasting patient engagement, asking them what they think about their care and how it could be improved is critical.
• Choice is the final key component as having choices to make in relation to their care will empower your patients and give them a feeling of control over their health outcomes.

The importance of action and closing the feedback loop:

Other vital elements of effective patient engagement consist of making sure that recommendations are implemented within the patient environment and also making sure improvements are designed to reach every single patient. It is very important that the most vulnerable are included.

It is essential that we not only engage patients but act on their feedback. Farah Schwartz, Manager of Patient and Family Education at Toronto Rehab, University Health Network explains, “You have to be ready and able to engage people, if you bring  people to the table and you don’t do what you’re saying you’re going to do, that’s actually a harmful thing, to engage people in that process and not act on it.”

Check out the Patient Experience Forum where we will be gathering to meet and learn from those organisations successfully driving patient experience strategies. Join us and take advantage of the early bird discounts now. Download the full conference agenda.

Patient Experience Q&A Sessions: Jonda Lambert from Innovatient

Strategy Institute: Okay, so just to start, just give us an overview of what you do and the organizational work that you do.

Jonda: So, I’m Jonda Lambert, I’m CEO of Innovatient. We’re involved in patient experience right at the bedside, promoting patient education and better clinical outcomes.

Strategy Institute:  We’ve heard a lot about various challenges the hospitals and clinics are facing trying to improve their patient experience. What do you think are the major challenges that the industry’s facing?

Jonda: I focus a lot of our energy on how do we make the transition from in-patient to home care and what are the tools and technologies that are available to patients that can promote better outcomes when they get home, and patients are changing, the technologies are advancing and they like to be communicated in different ways, so laying in a hospital bed is kind of a thing of the past, so, that’s what we work on.

Strategy Institute: Fantastic, how is it exactly your company works on that. What kind of solutions do you offer?

Jonda: We provide a television solution right at the bedside in a patient’s room and then we bring them back to the hospital’s website through their portals to be able to look at the education content that was created specifically for that patient and recorded while they were in the hospital so they don’t lose track of what the information was that they learned.

Strategy Institute: Fantastic! You spoke this morning and you’re also sponsoring the event, how would you describe your overall experience as a speaker and as a sponsor?

Jonda: Oh, I think that the conference is very, very well organized; it’s great to talk with people who are like-minded and share the same passion, so I think it’s a fantastic conference and I’ll be back again.

Strategy Institute: Thank you so much!

Be sure to check our next Patient Experience conference to ensure you meet patient experience professionals making a difference to Canadian Healthcare. You will also be networking with over 200 delegates and be totally inspired by one of the strongest panel of speakers in Canada.

For more Patient Experience and Healthcare news sign up to this blog.

People first: Staff retention and engagement as a key tactic to patient engagement

Staff retention and engagement builds the bond between worker and employer which in turn motivates the worker to increase output and perform tasks correctly.  This is a critical component to the success of patient experience improvement initiatives in healthcare institutes. It has been proven that engaged staff have improved the wellbeing of patients whilst improving their care quality and patient satisfaction.

Recognition and reward outside the standard structure

With budgets being squeezed ever further and there being seemingly not a cent to spare for anything new, it can seem hard to see how you create a recognition and reward program to recognize exceptional contributions to patient care.

However we often underestimate the value of applause and peer recognition so it may be that a monthly “award ceremony” per group will have a greater impact than any financial incentive.  No matter how cash strapped your organization, it’s pretty much always possible to come up with a certificate and a box of chocolates. The reward isn’t important, the recognition is.

In the longer term, it is important to campaign to adjust the existing reward schemes, as well as the recruitment policy to enable both to fit and support the ideals of patient experience.

Engaging staff with patient experience improvement programs

People tend to give their greatest efforts to supporting ideas they feel they own. To engage staff and keep them committed to your patient experience initiatives, it is vital to keep them all informed of changes and new expectations. Beyond this, you should get them to take ownership of how these changes are implemented.

Create value statements by having employee focus groups so that they can tell each other of their personal experiences of positive patient experiences to each other. This also serves as an information sharing network on non-medical services and financial support systems.

You can also get staff more involved by letting them engage with patients on patient experience, they will develop a better and improved understanding of a patient’s situation and thus feel more inclined to develop a positive patient experience.

To improve patient experience through staff, it is vital that they be given the tools they need to provide that good experience and ensure the patients receive the best options that are available to them. Staff will feel more empowered and motivated to deliver quality care if they feel they have the means to do this. They should be given the opportunity to:

• Stay Updated About Non-Medical Services
• Build A Community Network To Share Best Practice
• Understand The Financial Support System

Creating champions and cheerleaders for patient experience

It is vital to create champions or cheerleaders within the regular medical staff who will rally their co-workers behind the patient experience banner. They must be willing to help raise awareness and start the proceedings for improvements to the patient experience within their ward or department. They create an example for others to follow and act as the “authority” on the floor for what patient experience is. The members of staff in every healthcare facility need to be proud of the high quality care they offer.

Spotting your cheerleaders:

• They are usually high potential individuals in the scope of their normal role
• They’re not afraid to share their views or reach out to their peers where they feel they can add value
• They may have asked questions relating to patient experience (or even been critical of the status quo)
• They may have made suggestions or led localized initiatives to improve patient experience outside the “official” structure

Normally the right kind of people for this unofficial role will see the potential career benefits for themselves, but it never hurts to share your own journey with them so they can see where a patient focused approach has taken you.

Staff engagement and retention is very similar to patient engagement in a lot of ways, educate, involve, listen and you’re already most of the way there. To explore further opportunities on how to engage your staff in patient engagement initiatives, be sure to check www.patientexperiencesummit.com and come to meet the real leaders in patient experience.

For more Patient Experience and Healthcare news sign up to our email updates.

Patient Experience Q&A Sessions: Art Frohwerk from Quantum/Clearpath

Strategy Institute: Give us an overview of what you do and the organizational work that you do.

Art: My name is Art Frohwerk and  I’m from Seattle Washington, but enjoyed visiting Canada, and I’ve been involved in Patient Experience probably for about 20 years, before that I was involved in other facets of experience design, but I started my own companies that actually helped focus on ‘how do you create patient experiences in different settings’? I started in laboratories and clinical settings and I got and more and more into hospitals and home health and so on, but I’m a consultant, I’ve worked with over 100 organizations around North America, and I have to say this is one of the best conferences I’ve attended in all the years I’ve attended conferences. There’s such a good collection of ideas, and diversity of people and good stories and passion, and content and, it’s funny, I’ve developed a methodology and sort of a science of my own of what I believe it takes to deliver a good Patient Experience, so I’m testing all the new things I’m learning here and really seeing how it all fits together, see if it still holds up and it does and I’m really encouraged to participate in the  latter part of today where I get to present some ideas myself, but I’ve had some great conversations with people during breaks and so on, and I just hope that this effort that you’ve started continues and I look forward to it and the journey ahead. To meet patient experience professionals making a difference to Canadian Healthcare be sure to check our Patient Experience conference. We have one of the strongest panel of speakers in Canada and over 200 delegates to network with – to give you an insight into the companies who attend this event, check out our past attendees. For more Patient Experience and Healthcare news sign up to this blog.

Building a “patient experience brand” for your facility

Increased competition in healthcare has brought the marketing folks to the patient experience table looking to create and use a distinct “patient experience brand” to differentiate their organization. Some care givers resent the idea of a “brand” and ask if it is even possible to brand your health care facility, but yes of course it is, after all it is a business in a competitive environment.

Different elements that make up your patient experience brand:

Your patient experience brand is a promise that helps to create patient expectations as well as shape patient perceptions. It therefore needs to be a clear set of messages and values that are easily understood and remembered by the patient and the employees.

It is important that you understand your competitors as well as your consumers or patients to enable you to develop a brand that promises something unique that resonates with the right people. Doing this research first is imperative to the brand’s survival.

Brand promise

This is a mission statement that you would share with everyone who sues your facility. A commitment to delivering the best possible patient experience.

Brand values

These are the values that underpin your delivery of an exceptional patient experience. They should be on the tip of everyone’s tongue and used as a sanity check for every decision made that affects your patient experience.

Defining a brand for your facility that is appropriate to its history:

When building a brand for your facility it is important to consider the facility’s history and build the patient experience brand around it.

Walter Rojenko, Executive Director of Service Excellence for William Osler explains how their different facilities create their own brands that then have to be constantly shaped and evolved. “We have Etobicoke, that’s been around for 41 years, so you have to manage the shift of “Oh, geez, we’re kind of old, but we’re doing a lot of redevelopment, we’re going to build a new building, which will be finished by 2018…” So, they have this maturity and a notion of ‘return to glory’. And then you have Brampton, which is very infantile, right, it’s about 7 years old as a hospital, and trying to get its identity right. Its 1.3 million square feet, a huge hospital, so how do you make it warm, cuddly, and build its identity? The Peel Memorial is 82 years old, so it had identity; it had that notion of pedigree, the respect, the dignity. So, our system is really linked on traditional value and beliefs but we have got to be modern thinking because we have got to evolve.”

Using a distinctive patient experience to make your facility’s brand memorable and powerful can be a really smart move. A hospital with a great history of patient experience is something that a patient will rate highly above the majority of other factors.

Reinforcing brand values inside and out

A brand starts inside an organization and then develops a life of its own outside that organization based on people’s interactions with it (i.e. the patient and family experience). In order to ensure that your patient experience brand remains consistent with your original vision, you need to make sure that the words on the wall translate to the reality experienced by those in your care.

Care providers and support staff have to be bought in to providing the quality of patient experience that you are promising to your patients. It is very important that everyone within the company is informed about all the new initiatives and strategies. It is vital to continuingly reinforce changes in behavior and attitudes as well as the new brand values until they become second nature amongst the staff members.

If you want to learn more about building a patient experience brand, sign up to our Patient Experience Forum updates and be the first to know the latest news about the industry and be informed about our future events.

To meet patient experience professionals making a difference to Canadian Healthcare be sure to check our Patient Experience conference. We have one of the strongest panel of speakers in Canada and over 200 delegates to network with.

Patient Experience Q&A Sessions: Farah Schwartz from Toronto Rehab, University Health Network

Strategy Institute: Okay, so just to start, just give us an overview of what you do and the organizational work that you do.

Farah: My name is Farah Schwartz and I am manager of patient and family education at Toronto Rehab, University Health Network. The way that patient education and family education is connected to engagement is that patient education is a critical form of engagement, so patient education can be looked at as helping people learn, helping them self-manage, providing them information they need. In order to engage, they need to have education, they need to understand their healthcare, the healthcare system and one of the things we talk a lot about is health literacy, so the skills that people need to really navigate the healthcare system, to health information and to be engaged and to be able to have those skills. Otherwise we can’t really engage meaningfully in the system or with our providers. So, patient and family education and what I do and work on, I feel is truly critical to patient engagement.

Strategy Institute:  That’s great, just to follow up, what do you think are really the three main challenges in patient experience in terms of moving forward today?

Farah: So, I think some of the key messages from the panel this morning where they talked about what they were doing with patient advisory councils, one of the key things was really, you have to be ready, and you have to be ready and able to engage people, if you bring  people to disable them and you don’t do what you’re saying you’re going to do, that’s actually, it’s hard and there was a webinar that I saw that they talked about. Basically, a harmful thing is to engage people in that process and not act on it. But, on the flip-side, it really takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of resource to truly engage people, so whether it’s having at least one dedicated person or being able to help empower people so that they can participate in a way and to help create that change, it takes time, it takes effort and a lot of organizations just aren’t in a place to invest in it to invest in it, or they’re not they don’t have the resources to invest in it. I think, across the country, a lot of people don’t necessarily share the vision and that in and of itself is a barrier with them, even those who do don’t necessarily, they’re not in a place to truly enact it in a way that, maybe a more consumer-driven system is, or that you know already patients on our systems are.

Strategy Institute: Alright, so in that sense where do you think the Toronto Rehab is in terms of their implementation for a patient experience model?

Farah: So, Toronto Rehab integrated with the University Health Network two years ago so there are some definite similarities and then some things that are different, so I’ll speak for Toronto Rehab not UHN. Toronto Rehab is a very engaging organization from a clinical perspective one of the things that’s different about rehab, there’s been a lot of talk about acute care, rehab is different because, even though in traditional medicine of course you want consent, and you want people to be engaged in their care and their management more and more people need to be because they’re dealing with chronic conditions. But you could give acute care to someone, you could treat somebody and they’re not necessarily engaged in their care. You can’t engage in rehab with someone if they’re not engaged . You can’t make someone do therapy, you can’t make someone get exercise and so engagement is critical from a clinical perspective. I think because of the overall commitment to understanding of that, that Toronto Rehab, as an organization really acts out a lot of patients’ ideas so some of the things we’re talking about follow-up calls after discharge,  and just ongoing focus groups, things like that are in place at Toronto Rehab, and as well, each clinical program has a community advisory group or a patient and family council that advises and includes members of the community as well to talk about the continuum of care and engagement. So, any organization I think can continue to improve, but Toronto Rehab really does live a lot of the philosophies that are being talked about today.

Strategy Institute: That’s great to hear, and then lastly, what were you hoping to get out of the conference?

Farah: The networking and meeting other people who were doing this work, I think it’s, it’s great to get that and I’m also really excited to hear examples from across Canada because there’s such a diversity in how things are playing out in patient experience.

Be sure to check our next Patient Experience conference to ensure you meet patient experience professionals making a difference to Canadian Healthcare. You will also be networking with over 200 delegates and be totally inspired by one of the strongest panel of speakers in Canada.

For more Patient Experience and Healthcare news sign up to our email updates.

Realizing the organizational cultural shift that will create a step change in patient experience

What do we mean when we talk about a cultural shift in Patient Experience? A cultural shift in relation to patient experience means the healthcare institution attempts to move towards a different set of values, attitudes and behaviors that are better aligned with delivering an improved patient experience. Paul Gallant, President of Gallant Healthworks explains “I think cultural shift is something we can work towards, it’s not just an idea, it’s an action, although cultural shift is not something that can happen in a day, it can’t be a one-off. It requires a lot of time and will happen as the process moves forward, but the aim shouldn’t be the cultural shift, the aim should be to improve the patient experience.”

Aligning structured frameworks and processes with cultural change in patient experience

To provide a framework and processes that will support cultural change, it is important to first identify the framework and processes supporting the current organizational culture and then assess how these might be used or tweaked to support what the organization is working towards. The new actions and behaviors that are being implemented need to be encouraged and supported by the organization’s frameworks and processes, otherwise cultural change will feel like a struggle and will ultimately fail as easier old style behaviors return.

7 steps to an effective cultural shift in Patient Experience

Any cultural shift in a work environment is difficult to implement as the organizational culture has be built up over many years from all its participants, it is a lot easier to start a cultural shift in a new organization. Therefore, it is very important that employees unlearn their current values and assumptions, so that the new ones can be implemented. To create an effective cultural shift, it is very important to understand the current culture to begin with, and then make changes that can be put into place. If employees are unwilling to change their behavior or attitudes, then a cultural shift is not going to work.

1. Clearly define the new culture in terms all can understand and identify with.
2. Communicate the new culture in large settings, small groups, and one-to-one, if need be.
3. Leaders must embody the new patient focused culture in their every action, word and behavior.  Anything less will be perceived as hypocrisy and lack of commitment to the change.
4. On-going follow-up, support and encouragement are essential. Start every meeting discussing the progress towards the new culture.
5. Share the success stories about individuals or teams that have fully embraced the new culture. Also, share the lessons learned from failures.
6. Involve the employees, encouraging their new ideas and thoughts and putting them into practice.
7. There needs to be accountability.  Those staff members who do not accept or want to accept the new cultural values and goals must be asked to leave.  This is often tough to do, but it is necessary.

Any cultural change involves changing the mind-set and instincts of each person in the organization.  This does not happen overnight.  So, patience and persistence is required to continue down the path for the one to three years it will often take to realize a full and complete cultural change in your organization. The National Forum on Patient Experience will be holding events this year. You can download the latest agenda and get to know the top speakers and professionals driving the patient experience industry forward. For more Patient Experience and Healthcare news sign up to our email updates.  

Patient Experience Q&A Sessions: Kadean Ogilvie-Pinter from Lady Dunn Health Centre – Wawa

We met and interviewed Kadean at National Forum for Patient Experience. Kadean is from Lady Dunn Health Centre – Wawa where she’s the director of patient care and nursing.

Strategy Institute: can you tell us a little bit about your role and involvement in patient experience?

Kadean: I’m involved in Patient Experience, not at the direct level, but in any complaints or any concerns, those come to me, but also I’m involved in terms of looking at the quality of care that we’re giving to our patients on that level, that how I would say I’m involved in patient Experience.

Strategy Institute: because you’re involved in Patient Experience on a different level, like we do have a lot of people talking about you know gathering this information, accumulating it…for you the challenges you face when dealing with the patient experience are very different. What are the main challenges you face in your role?

Kadean: I think in terms of understanding what has happened to patients, there’s different tactics that I use in terms of interviewing staff or even going back to the patient to get an understanding, but I think within our organization we’re still in the infancy of Patient Experience where we have the basic things there, we have the satisfaction surveys. I think we could more to get that information and to see the impact of how we’re delivering care, so this conference has been very great today to give me some ideas starting to do some brainstorming that I could take back and maybe not knowing all the challenges, because we haven’t done a lot in terms of engaging patients, to give us their experience and to change things based on that.

To meet patient experience professionals making a difference to Canadian Healthcare be sure to check our Patient Experience conference. We have one of the strongest panel of speakers in Canada and over 200 delegates to network with – to give you an insight into the companies who attend this event, check out our past attendees.

Patient Experience Q&A Sessions: Walter Rojenko from William Osler

We met and interviewed Walter Rojenko at our National Forum for Patient Experience. Walter is Executive Director of Service Excellence for William Osler, two hospitals ‘ramped’ in Etobicoke of about 900 beds, about a million touch-points of patients, and probably the busiest emergency department in Canada, numbering about 180,000 visits a year! They also deliver the most babies in Canada, about 8,000 delivered between Brampton and Etobicoke.

As if this wasn’t enough Walter and his colleagues are building Peel Memorial a third site, which will be health wellness ambulatory to meet the needs of their diverse community. They’ve received a number of awards and documentaries have been made about how they’re infusing diversity in their care as well as recent articles in the Globe and Mail about their unique approach to the needs of their community.

Strategy Institute: Would you mind telling us a little about your role and your approach to patient experience?

Walter: My portfolio is pretty cool because I have patient relations, I have a post-discharge call centre, so we call our patients two days after discharge, I have the volunteers and I have diversity and equity services. What’s core is happy employees, happy patients, happy families, happy outcomes, that’s where I come from, from that notion. It’s all around staff satisfaction, physician satisfaction, volunteer satisfaction, and patient satisfaction. So, how do we get everybody engaged and partnering with each other to deliver the best outcomes possible?

Strategy Institute: Because you’re working with so many facilities I can’t even ask what the main challenge is about because I’d imagine it is the scale? Or is that ‘bind’, is it that culture shift? What do you think?

Walter: Well, we have Etobicoke, it’s been around about 41 years now, so you have that cultural shift of, “Oh, geez, we’re kind of old, but we’re doing a lot of redevelopment, we’re going to build a new building, which will be finished by 2018…” So, they have this maturity and a notion of ‘return to glory’, right?

And then you have Brampton, which is very infantile. It’s about 7 years old as a hospital, 6-7 years old, and trying to get its identity, and at 1.3 million square feet it’s a huge hospital so how do you make it warm, cuddly, and build its identity?

This Peel Memorial, which is the new site, is 82 years old, so it had identity, it had that notion of pedigree, the respect, the dignity that was built from people and it was built from a memorial, right, so it was very mature.

So when you look at our system of sites, it’s very multi-generational we have one who was starting and one who is older and now we’re going to be starting again with Peel Memorial and evolving within all that. So, our system is really linked on traditional value and beliefs but we’ve got to be modern thinking because we’ve got to evolve, within these patients and families going forward, and merging and forging those relationships with the community which is there.

Strategy Institute: Absolutely! And we’ve heard a lot about that cultural shift here today and about factors that physician buy-in to, are these all things that you’re dealing with at your hospital?

Walter: For sure, it’s all pretty universal, I think how we approach it is probably more interesting and I think we all know the ‘what’. Our tool box, we probably have a hundred tools in there, it’s the ‘how’. And it’s the how that when in your different cultures, (because I think the  hospitals do have their own cultures, they’re unique,) is a reflection of the community, they’re also reflective of the staff, and it’s the ‘how’, so that’s what you pick up at conferences like this is ‘How’d you get to that point?’  and ‘How’d you overcome some of the barriers and challenges?’ and that’s kind of my note-taking going “Oh my God, that’s brilliant!” And usually, it’s simple, it’s ‘sharing’ you know for example when Leslie talked about the movement and being careful of that movement and the passion. What I’ve learned, and I’ve only been in the health business about a year and a half, is that you have to have practical passion. Because if it’s not practical, you lose people. And you lose the clinical side.  And we have got to bridge that gap between the clinical side and clinicians and the administration side going forward saying “Hey, if we’re going to be in this together, it’s going to be very powerful when we get this right, and it’s not when it’s…it’s not ‘if’ when we get it, it’s ‘when’ we get it right.” This is all about the patient and the family…

The clinical side gets it like we can’t sometimes, we can’t laugh at the physicians because at one time they owned hospitals, they were ‘it’. And now it’s, ‘we’ve evolved’ and now maybe we’ve evolved too much to the administration controlling it, somewhere we have got to put that in the middle as we’re putting in the patients, right? So, we’ve got to give physicians some of their due and the nurses, around, how do we get, how do we solve this together? ‘Cause, like I said, being new to healthcare…everybody wants a return to glory!’

People came in to care about people, and somewhere in there, when you look how it works, I look how divided between task and relationship and we seem to have piled in all of these tasks and forgot about the relationship part, so, somewhere we’ve got to balance it and when you talk to the clinical side, you almost say “Yeah, my work is 80% task and 20% relationship”. Can we get a happy medium somewhere? And that’s where we have to help each other going forward, and that’s where forums like these help.

You can meet top professionals in the industry like Walter at our next Patient Experience conference where we will be gathering to meet and learn from those organisations successfully driving patient experience strategies. See the types of organisations you will meet at our next meeting.