Help your ED staff get over culture shock
Help your ED staff get over culture shock
Patient satisfaction improvement projects can be a significant challenge for an ED manager, says Marcia Abernathy, RN, director of emergency services at Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, MO.
"I think the basic temperament and type of individual who works in the emergency setting is not really your 'fluffy' person," she says. "They are very intent on the clinical aspects of the care."
In other words, Abernathy says, ED staff take great pride in their quality of clinical care, but are sometimes not as focused on their interpersonal relationships. How did she overcome this challenge?
"You have to have credibility with your staff, and since I had been on the clinical side myself and had fallen into the same trap, I had it," she says. "I told them that we may be meeting the expectation of every patient that they will be getting good care, but we needed to go a step further and give the patient a feeling of comfort and safety as well."
This meant "really forcing the staff" to put themselves in the position of the patient, says Abernathy. She reinforced that message at staff meetings. "I had to be there and watch provider-patient interactions, and when I got specific feedback from the patients, I shared it," she says.
Abernathy also listened to what her staff had to say. "They initially did not like the idea of a script," she recalls. "They said, 'If you want us to have our care be more personalized, then let us use the same basic content to get the main points across, but allow us to make it sound like us.'" Abernathy agreed.
Who calls discharged patients?
Another area where Abernathy bowed to reality involved the daily follow-up calls to discharged patients. The ED nurses handled these calls themselves initially. "Many times the nurse was actually calling their own patient and actually got feedback," she recalls. However, when the census went up, Abernathy realized that task was no longer possible. "Ultimately, we had to acquire an assistant ED manager for evening shifts, and now that's the first thing they do," she says.
Patient satisfaction improvement projects can be a significant challenge for an ED manager, says Marcia Abernathy, RN, director of emergency services at Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, MO.Subscribe Now for Access
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