Nursing

Making the hospital your stage - for you, your staff, and your patients

Nurse Leader Weekly, April 17, 2006

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Healthcare needs to stop thinking that it provides a service and realize that it provides an experience, said Fred Lee during a presentation entitled "Let's stop talking to nurses about patient satisfaction," given during the Emergency Nurses Association Leadership Challenge, held in Austin, TX, in February.

In his presentation, Lee examined ways to improve the patient experience and discussed how the role played by employees is the most crucial. He presented strategies to help managers hire the right people, coach existing employees, and generally ensure that patient satisfaction is a high priority.

Lee argued that healthcare provides an experience, just like Disney World provides an experience. Lee, a former vice president of a major medical center, learned first-hand about the Disney experience as a Disney cast member, and has written a book about how to incorporate the Disney philosophy into healthcare.

How to create an experience

Lee used the analogy of the theater to illustrate how to produce an experience. He said managers can use theater skills and experience to coach staff.

Lee recommends that a manager begin by describing the experience he or she wants a patient to have. He recommends taking a real patient's story and breaking it into the following scenes. He used the example of an emergency department as a good way to tell a patient's story:

  • Scene 1: arriving
  • Scene 2: triage
  • Scene 3: waiting (the never-ending scene)
  • Scene 4: see physician
  • Scene 5: have tests
  • Scene 6: diagnosis followed by admit or discharge

Using this analogy allows the manager to take each scene and break it down. "Ask, is that the experience you want the patient to have?" Lee said.

The manager should concentrate on the employees who are "actors" in each scene and examine how their roles affect the patients' experiences. Ask staff how they can make the scene better and more memorable. Remind staff that they are always on stage regardless of whether they're conscious of it. They always affect patients' experiences, even if they're just standing and chatting outside of a patient's room.

"We can be heard and we can be seen," he said. "We're giving a message, even when we're silent."

Source: Adapted from Patient Care Staffing Report, April 2006, HCPro, Inc.



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