The Secret Sits
Posted: June 11, 2018 Filed under: Change, Health and Care Radicals, Hope, Hospital, Leadership, Learning, Patient, Patient Experience, Personal Accountability, Safety, Uncategorized | Tags: Accountability, culture of safety, data, Experience, Healthcare, hospital safety, Hospitals, improvement, Leadership, measurement, Patient Experience, patient safety, Patients Leave a commentI recently used Robert Frost’s poem “The Secret Sits” as a blog writing prompt…
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
In the blog I suggest that much of what we do as leaders in healthcare (the dance) and what we measure in healthcare are disconnected from what our patients and staff really want and need (the secret sitting in the middle).
I was recently in a hospital conference room preparing for a leadership meeting; the walls were papered from floor to ceiling with graphs, tables and charts… a “loud” visual statement that a myriad aspect of operations was being measured and reported. During our meetings I dug a little deeper, listened to the leaders, caregivers and patients, and then looked a little closer at the “scores” on the walls.
Outcomes, as measured and reported, apparently hadn’t changed much over the past two-years… It was not lost on me either that this conference room that is billed as the “control-center” of operations felt lifeless and soulless… For an organization committed to ‘health’ and ‘care’, this felt like a disconnect.
And I’ve seen hospitals that are listening to the “secret”. They are measuring, reacting and acting differently. They are breathing life into their data and working on ways to make it as real-time as the work and care that it is intended to measure. Outcomes are improving, care is safer and the experience of those caring and being cared for is markedly improved; so I am optimistic and incredibly hopeful that we can rethink what we measure and how we act. How we lead.
Check out my blog “Improving the Experience of Care” (first in a two-part series) on our company’s site. I’d love your thoughts, comments and ideas:
- Are we measuring the right things in healthcare?
- Is chasing an improved CAHPS score, or a better CMS Star Rating, the right way to drive change?
- Can we measure everything that matters?
- How do you measure a healthy, effective and respectful culture?
- What’s the secret that you’re dancing around?
Improving the Experience of Care – let’s start with our words.
Posted: March 17, 2017 Filed under: Accountability, Audactity, Change, Hope, Hospital, Host, Patient Experience, Workplace Culture | Tags: Experience, Healthcare, Hospitality, Hospitals, Patients 4 Comments
I recently re-read the words of broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite, “America’s healthcare system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”
This sad and yet truthful reflection, combined with the reality that our founding partner, mentor, friend, student of the classics, and therefore a natural etymologist – Tim Sullivan – had me thinking about the origination of the words we use in healthcare.
Two words in particular; hospital and patient.
A quick scan of history reveals that in the middle ages hospitals were in fact almshouses for the poor, or hostels for pilgrims. The word ‘hospital’ comes from the Latin word hospes, meaning an entertainer, host, a visitor, a guest, a friend bound by the ties of hospitality.
Another noun derived from this is hospitum which came to mean hospitality, or the relationship between guest and shelterer. Hospes is also the root of the English word host.
In my travels, I have witnessed many hospital leaders who have lost sight of the fact that our roots go back to providing shelter for the poor, a resting place for those on pilgrimage, and completely lost sight of the tenets of welcoming patients as guest or friend.
The English noun ‘patient’ comes from the Latin word patiens, the present participle of the verb, patior, meaning ‘I am suffering’.
The hospital should be a place of respite for the friend that is suffering.
I think it is fair to say that if you’re leading in a hospital (regardless of size) you’re contributing to the running of one of the oldest aspects of the “service industry”. Yet at many hospitals, we seem to have left the consistent delivery of this ‘service’ completely up to chance or in the care of those without the training and skills necessary to deliver upon the promise.
Service – from the old English meaning religious devotion or a form of liturgy, from old French servise or Latin servitium ‘slavery,’ from servus ‘slave.’ The early sense of the verb (mid-19th century) was ‘be of service to’, or ‘to provide with a service.’
What service is your institution providing those who are suffering that come to your hospital for care and cure?
Do you insist on telling your patients and communities why they should be satisfied with your ‘service’ because of how safe you are, what good ratings you get, or how qualified your staff are?
Or are you listening to those you are called to serve in order that you might better deliver the service(s) they need?
Your patients want to feel welcome, be treated kindly, understood, healed, cured, communicated with (not to), and they don’t want their time to be wasted.
The rest (the safety, the expertise and the qualifications) are a prerequisite – foundational and non-negotiable.
Are you listening to those you serve?
Richard Corder 