- 84% reported it was very important for medical professionals to have listening skills
- 83% reported verbal/communication skills
- 71% reported bedside care/empathy skills
- 64% reported time management skills
- 61% reported written communication skills
As a hospital manager, results from surveys like this could be used to improve the overall patient satisfaction of the hospital. Even though outcomes and the quality of care are very important, we also need to be sure we are taking into account what patients are really wanting from their providers. The healthcare field is very competitive and one way to make your hospital stand out from others is if there is a plan implemented to ensure that providers understand these non-medical skills that patients want and make them more aware of them. I know that this is probably easier said than done, but as a manager, just being kept up to date on different polls like this and keeping track of patient satisfaction survey results could give you an idea on what areas you need to focus on in order to continue to improve your organization.
Source:
Walker, T. (2017, September 19). Poll: Most important non-medical skills for healthcare providers. Managed Healthcare Executive, Retrieved from http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/node/440914
Great poll! To me it also reflects a perfect storm of clinicians mentally reviewing doctoral-level technical intellectual knowledge while at the same time trying to overtly verbalize it to a layperson patient at their presumed level of comprehension, in an environment where, due to production pressures, appointments or bedside encounters are growing shorter and shorter.
ReplyDeleteCase in point: for the first 20 years of my career in anesthesia, all patients scheduled for elective surgery had to come to their pre-anesthetic assessment several days prior to their surgery. Each assessment took 15-20 minutes and included a mini-physical of anatomical features relevant to airway management (or spinal placement, or regional nerve block), pre-op instructions, obtaining informed consent after discussing risks/benefits/alternatives, ensuring the surgeon had ordered the appropriate lab tests, EKG, Xray as needed, and an unhurried time for Q&A. Due to patient complaints about "repeated trips to the hospital," the anesthesia preop clinic is now closed. The above steps are compressed into a rushed five minute encounter at the bedside in the preop holding room, all the while the OR manager is counting this against anesthesia's OR turnover time. It's here we discover the patient failed to fast after midnight, the needed chest xray was not ordered, the patient has anatomical features of their mouth making intubation very challenging, etc etc. Invariably the anesthesia department will get dinged on the patient satisfaction survey, whereas in years past this never happened. This same scenario is repeated time after time throughout the day, in one form or another, in almost all specialties throughout the hospital.
The management challenge is to design processes which give clinicians adequate time to fulfill their patient care duties in an unhurried manner, while at the same time minimizing down-time which generates no revenue. Quite a tall order.
I just re-read your article, and really think you summarized it superbly. Continuous improvement is what it's all about, and that comes from obtaining and evaluating data on a repetitive basis.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post! We often hear about the need for more of those qualities, and it was interesting to see it quantified in that survey. I want to focus on the Empathy portion, as I am involved with some empathy work in my role. We are working to help clinical staff interact in more ways that convey empathy. We have even interviewed parents to better understand examples during their hospital experience that made them feel that empathy was being shown to them, and their child.
ReplyDeleteThis field is really increasing - there is even a company out there, Empathetics, that specializes in this training. They have a very interesting TED talk that is on the home page that you may want to watch and also explore their site: http://empathetics.com/