{"id":6939,"date":"2019-09-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prodim2020.wpengine.com\/the-employee-experience-is-crucial-to-a-successful-patient-experience\/"},"modified":"2019-09-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T00:00:00","slug":"the-employee-experience-is-crucial-to-a-successful-patient-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/blog\/the-employee-experience-is-crucial-to-a-successful-patient-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"The Employee Experience is Crucial to a Successful Patient Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Employee Experience and Patient Experience Go Hand-in-hand<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s be clear: I love my job. Truly. In fact, I\u2019m one of those people who truly enjoys going to work. Sickening? Perhaps. But hang on\u2026here comes the punch line: it\u2019s been A WEEK. School is back in session, which means a new and unfamiliar schedule\u2026and necessary bedtimes. (I really dislike bedtimes, especially on beautiful August summer evenings here in WI.) Kid sports and activities are again in full swing, most nights of the week. And we\u2019re nearing Q4 on the business side of things, which means\u2026client budgets need to get used and therefore, we are UBER busy. Which truly, is a good thing.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s not a good thing? The 13 hours of sleep I\u2019ve managed across the last three nights. And, confession time: I\u2019m simply not my best in this intense a situation, on this little sleep, with this level of stress. I\u2019m not patient, I\u2019m less kind than I should be, I don\u2019t listen to my kids and husband very well, and I don\u2019t truly engage in my life. I\u2019m surviving.<\/p>\n

After the week started the way it did, I saw this meme on a social media site the other day and it struck a chord with me. UNTIL, I had a friend say to me, \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be a survivor, a warrior\u2026you were made for better \u2013 you\u2019re a THRIVER.”<\/p>\n

And you know what? She was absolutely right. All the personal stuff aside, when I\u2019m stressed, tired, overwhelmed, I\u2019m most certainly not as professionally innovative and sharp as I know I\u2019m capable of. And it got me thinking\u2026healthcare professionals, with whom we are working more and more, work in this type of environment frequently. The stress, the \u201cgo-go-go,\u201d the utter fatigue\u2026this is a common scenario for many of those we trust to help us get and remain healthy \u2013 our physicians, nurses, and the office and admin staff that support them.<\/p>\n

You know those moments when you stop in your tracks and think \u201choly cow?\u201d Yeah, I had one of those moments. Because about a month ago, the pediatric after-hours line sent me to the emergency room with a sick kid. A physician friend on staff that night came out to greet us. He then stopped in our room to check in again at the end of his shift at 12:30 AM before heading home to his wife and three kids. Thinking back now, I realize how much better our experience was that night because this employee cared.<\/p>\n

This is one key reason why we need to care about \u2013 and measure, monitor, and respond to – the EMPLOYEE experiences in healthcare, and not just the patient experiences.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These physicians, nurses, office staff, they are human and prone to human emotions, reactions, flaws just like the rest of us. Which means that they also get tired, frustrated, and stressed \u2013 and that this can also impact the way in which they perform their jobs that day.<\/p>\n

As was the case for my family that night in the ED, these employees are the ones that can make or break a patient experience. And that night, we were fortunate to have care reflective of a healthcare organization that values, appreciates, and actively works to engage its employees in their roles.<\/p>\n

Recently, I was trying to schedule a specialist appointment for my son and the \u201cfirst available time\u201d was 4 months out. My poor child suffers from major allergies, has asthma, and we couldn\u2019t get his prescription renewed until we’d visited his allergist. Realistically, by the time we\u2019d have been able to get in, all the allergens would have been frozen out, since we live in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, so it made more sense for us to cancel that appointment and free that slot up for someone else!<\/p>\n

This brings us to a second reason why we must care deeply about healthcare employee experience: the current shortage of healthcare professionals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018, projected that 1.1 million additional nurses are needed to avoid further shortage, and that as a profession, employment opportunities for nurses will grow at a faster rate than all other occupations from 2016-2026.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a similar story on the physician side, with the Association of American Medical Colleges projecting a shortage of 120,000 physicians by 2030. With Baby Boomers getting older, this shortage will only increase due to increases in patient volume and demand, and as Baby Boomer healthcare professionals retire.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, these shortages will impact both availability and quality of care. While not a macro solution, one way healthcare systems can proactively mitigate these shortages on a local level is to focus on efforts designed to retain their teams. Employee retention is a complex concept, and impacted by a variety of factors: the nature of the work, the employee\u2019s manager and teammates, the work environment, work-life balance, perceived value of the work the employee does, etc.<\/p>\n

Understanding what matters to healthcare employees, and actively working to engage them is going to be critical in both the short and long term.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was reading an article recently about a nurse on her way to work who, upon seeing a mother running down the highway, pulled over and was able to revive the woman\u2019s non-breathing infant child. When these stories make the news, two things often strike me as consistent elements: the individual involved in the life-saving measure is a healthcare professional, and the drama has played out outside the confines of the hospital or clinic in which this healthcare professional works.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: this is what these professionals DO. Not all may actually work in a role in which they are called to save lives on a daily basis, but on the whole, it is these same employees, going about their jobs on a daily basis, who are frequently the reason why a patient in their care has lived instead of died.<\/p>\n

This story illustrates a third reason why a program measuring a holistic patient experience MUST also include measurement of employee experience. The actions, the attention, the engagement of the doctors, nurses, in-take staff are often what separates patients from life or death.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Healthcare systems and hospitals are the entities that have the power to proactively understand and manage the employment experiences of their employees. Whether they do so, not only impacts the delivery of care, it can literally mean the difference between life and death.<\/p>\n

So how can the healthcare industry value their employees while providing an excellent patient experience? Below are some best practices to be considered:<\/strong><\/p>\n