The patient experience is a critical factor when determining a hospital's patient satisfaction and overall success.

Not only does patient satisfaction help a hospital grow, but it makes patients happier and even improves employee morale. It plays a massive role in every part of a hospital—from profit to employee culture to star ratings and more.

When patients are happy, it improves a hospital’s rating and makes it more competitive.

The patient experience is more important today than ever before.

But what contributes to a positive patient experience, and how can a hospital improve patient satisfaction?

Here’s everything you need to know.

6 Factors That Contribute to a Positive Patient Experience

Patient satisfaction plays a huge role in a hospital's success and well-being. When healthcare providers provide an excellent patient experience full of kindness and compassionate care, it shows patients that they are more than just a number.

Providing healthcare isn’t enough—hospital staff members must show that they care. Here are other factors that contribute to a positive patient experience.

1. Wait Times

Wait times play a significant role in overall patient satisfaction. Many patients feel that waiting is one of the most stressful parts of being in a hospital.

Studies state that when patients have to wait (whether in a waiting room, for results, or for a call back), it can negatively affect their experience.

Patients get frustrated when they arrive at an appointment on time and have to wait for long periods before seeing the doctor. Many people believe that a lack of punctuality shows a lack of respect toward patients.

It also shows a lack of commitment, poor work ethic, and inefficiency.

2. Personal Engagement

Personal engagement improves the patient experience, hospital readmissions, star ratings, and more. Personal engagement means getting to know the patient, listening to them, and being empathetic.

Empathy makes patients feel like they are in a safe space.

When we engage with our patients, it shows our desire to help them, which improves a patient’s stay in the hospital.

3. Convenience

Convenience plays a vital role in the overall patient experience.

But what does convenience in a hospital mean, exactly?

Convenience can mean doctor availability, ease of appointment booking, availability of
information, hold times, wait times, location of the hospital, and more.

People have busy lives—they don’t want to wait on hold on the phone to book an appointment or go onto a slow-loading website to review results.

When a hospital provides easy access to its services, it significantly improves the patient experience.

4. Being Understood

A patient wants to feel that their healthcare provider understands them. They want their healthcare provider to understand not only their health problem but also the emotions and feelings surrounding their sickness or ailment.

The better a healthcare provider understands a patient’s story, the better the experience.

When a healthcare provider provides a nonjudgmental understanding, it helps patients feel like they care. You can show that you understand a patient in many ways—by getting to know them, asking questions about their lives, laughing with them, smiling with them, etc.

5. Employee Morale

Employee morale plays a huge role in a patient's experience. Remember—a hospital’s atmosphere shifts when employee morale is up.

Being sick is stressful enough as it is—when patients see that hospital staff members are stressed—or that morale is low—it affects their experience.

6. Kindness

It makes a huge difference to patients when staff members listen to them and treat them with kindness. Much like engaging with them, when staff members have a positive attitude and are kind to patients, it makes them more relatable.

By making patients feel seen and interacting with them—even in the simplest way—staff members can create meaningful interactions that leave a lasting impression on patients who are going through a very stressful time.

This type of care can be as simple as remembering small things about a patient’s life, making direct eye contact, expressing empathy, or showing that you have good intentions.

Show patients that you care.

Patient satisfaction improves employee morale, enhances job satisfaction, creates job security, and makes a hospital more competitive. It can improve a patient’s health and life, attract new patients, improve clinical outcomes, and more.

Remember: when patients are satisfied with their hospital experience, they are more likely to come back and refer others to the hospital.

Treat your patients with kindness care—and reap the rewards.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to improve their patients' overall experience. We understand the time constraints in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the necessary skills to be a better, more positive healthcare worker.

We provide live training and speaking at events to help hospitals improve employee engagement and their patients' overall experience.

Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Please visit our YouTube channel for more information on this topic at https://www.youtube.com/user/Customlearningsue.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

• The Great Resignation
• How to Recruit, Select and Retain Hospital Staff Members
• The 12 Imperatives of Caregiver Inspiration

How do you empower hospital staff members?

In today’s healthcare world, most hospital staff members experience an abundance of stress - from an onslaught of new patients due to COVID-19, to strict new guidelines, to new health measures. A lot of people working in hospitals are also experiencing burnout.

When staff members experience burnout, it has a direct effect on the patient experience.

So how do we empower staff members to do their job, be positive, and improve the patient experience?

We do it through empowerment. Here are seven ways to do it.

7 Ways to Empower Hospital Staff Members Using the Empowerment Bundle

1. Service Recovery

When staff members work together to execute excellent patient care, the environment changes.

All employees must make it a part of their daily practice to “mess up, fess up, and dress up.” When we make this a part of our practice, habits, and culture, it displaces the old behaviors and becomes our cultural practice.

When we make a mistake, we have to be accountable for it and do our best to rectify it and learn from it. That’s what service recovery is all about.

2. Six-Foot Rule

In the days of COVID-19 and social distancing, all staff members must abide by the six-foot rule to keep a safe distance between themselves, other staff members, and patients.

Following the six-foot rule not only respects the people and patients you are working with but shows them that the hospital is doing its part to protect patients.

3. Managing Up

Managing up means saying something significant about another caregiver when you hand them off to another patient.

By doing this, the patient can rest assured that the staff member caring for them will do their best to provide the best service possible.

4. Platinum Live-it

The platinum live-it rule emphasizes the importance of following up. Whether you are following up with patients, other hospital staff members, a doctor, or another superior, doing so will improve the overall experience for both patients and staff members.

5. No Pass Zone

When you see an opportunity to help a fellow staff member or patient, do not pass it up. A culture of engagement builds off of teamwork. Do not pass up the opportunity to help someone in need.

6. License to Silence

Everyone is empowered to speak with a kinder, gentler voice, fix the noise, and honor and recognize quiet time, healing time, or hush time in the afternoons or evenings.

Never underestimate the power of silence in patient care. A patient’s perception of silence is more important in the day than it is sleeping at night.

As a caregiver, this is something you must always remember and practice.

7. Freedom to Clean

You are never too important to pick up something dirty on the floor, whether dirty bandages, dirty paper, or anything else. Think about how you keep your desk organized. Patients can see it, so it looks professional.

With the freedom to clean, we all have the empowerment to clean as we go.

Lead in the New Normal By Empowering Your Hospital Staff

It’s not easy to lead in the new normal. The above seven best practices of the empowerment bundle can help improve patient satisfaction in a hospital during these difficult times. They can also improve the morale of all your hospital staff.

By following all these best practices, everyone can train up. Everyone can be part of the solution.

Reimagining Healthcare Engagement Summit

In June, we hold a special one-day summit called “Reimagining Healthcare Engagement,” which will be 100% live streaming. Register to learn more about how to refresh the workplace through resilience, agility, and kindness.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

Why Your Hospital’s Online Reputation is Important to its Success
A Positive Attitude is Key to Great Patient Care
Non-Verbal Communication is the Key to Great Patient Care

How do you focus on achieving a positive attitude?

Your attitude affects every single aspect of your life - from your personal life to your professional life, to the lives of the patients you take care of.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does your attitude change from day-to-day?
• Is your attitude the type of attitude that people want to be around?
• If attitude was contagious, would you want anyone to catch yours?

These are all vital questions you should be asking yourself, especially if you are in the healthcare industry.

This quote from Nobody's Home: Candid Reflections of a Nursing Home Aide by Thomas Edward Gass hones in on the importance of having a positive attitude in healthcare:

The book highlights the fact that attitude is a vital aspect of almost everything we do. In fact, every question we ask a patient has some root in a positive attitude.

Remember: Attitude is contagious. It affects and impacts everyone around you. Think about what it is like to be around a grouch. When you’re around a negative person, does it lift you up, or bring you down?

In most cases, it will bring you down.

Not everyone shares the same level of positive attitude and engagement like you. Keeping this in mind, here are five attitudes of engagement at a hospital.

The Importance of a Positive Attitude: 5 Attitudes of Engagement at a Hospital

1. Superstars: 3% of the workforce. They will always rise to the top
2. Winners: 20% of the workforce. They come in early, stay late, and have a desire to contribute. They want to get ahead and make a difference
3. Grinners: Over 50% of the workforce. These employees just get by. They are there for a paycheck and typically just sit on a fence. Leadership and coaching are vital for Grinners.
4. Whiners: 25 % of the workforce. They do as little as possible and always want something for nothing. They have toxic attitudes with co-workers and/or patients.
5. Slugs: 2-10 % of the workforce. Slugs are counterproductive. Management keeps them around because they don't want frontline staff to work short, but they shouldn't really be there. These people are negative and have a bad work ethic.

Ask yourself:

1. Which attitude do you think you show?
2. Which attitude would your peers say you represent?
3. What is the best way to communicate with each of the five attitudes?

Attitude Matters

Remember: Attitude always matters.

No patient or co-worker wants to be around someone who is negative, or worse, indifferent. Does a negative attitude serve you well? Does it serve anyone well?

A negative attitude will bring people down, and the type of attitude you have - whether negative or positive - has a domino effect. When you are positive, it shines a light on you and everyone around you.

How would you gauge your attitude? How would other people rate your attitude on a scale of one to ten? These are all important questions to ask yourself, especially when working in healthcare. This is because, in a hospital environment, your attitude can have a direct impact on patients as well as coworkers.

If someone around you is negative, don’t let that negativity consume you. You cannot let the things that you can’t control interfere with the things that you can control.

Focus on creating a positive attitude and making a difference with each and every single patient you interact with. Bring a light and shine it wherever you are, because at the end of the day, making a difference is up to you.

Our ‘Do it’ Recommendations

1. Please state a recent example of how you maintained a positive winner’s attitude when in a difficult situation with a patient or team member
2. Describe the positive outcome achieved as a result. How did it feel?

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos that can help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Do you, or any of your hospital staff members, need to fix your attitude?

Do you ever wonder just how much a positive attitude contributes to creating a healing environment in healthcare?

A positive attitude plays a massive role in every hospital. There’s an old cliche, “it’s your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.”

Well, cliches are cliches for a reason - because there’s wisdom in there.

Attitude matters.

Here’s why.

Why You Should Fix Your Attitude in a Hospital Environment

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to fix your attitude so that you shine with positivity.

Being positive all the time - especially in a hospital environment - isn’t easy. But as a leader, it’s your job to inspire others and show positivity whenever you can.

When you fix your attitude and exude positivity in a hospital environment, your staff members will reflect it. Your staff members will then reflect it on their patients.

Your attitude can completely change a patient’s (and staff member’s) experience.

Positive Books Can Nourish the Soul

There are some great positive books leaders can read that inspire, educate, and nourish the soul. One book, in particular, is called ‘Nobody’s Home’ by Thomas Edward Gass.

The book tells a story about how Gass grew up with a single mother.

He went to seminary college, and when he graduated, he decided to travel the world. As he traveled, he lost touch with his mother. After receiving word that she was in her last few days on her deathbed, he returned to spend those days with her. When she passed away, he began working in a nursing home out of guilt and atonement.

Gass tells the story of the loneliness, friendships, hard work, and laziness of the communities that form in a skilled nursing facility.

His most profound sentence in the entire book was:

“Based upon our attitude, we can bring joy or misery.”

Bring Joy Everywhere You Go

Working in a hospital isn’t easy. From patient satisfaction to hospital ratings to ensuring employee morale is up, being a leader in health care has its struggles.

But when you’re a leader, you have to do all you can to promote a culture of positivity. You must lead by example.

Fix your attitude, and your attitude will reflect on everyone around you.

Remember: you can bring joy or misery wherever you go.

To keep a positive attitude, we recommend reading positive books that inspire and educate. We also suggest requesting a copy of our Operation Uplift Team Charter.

Download the Operation Uplift Team Organization Charter Today

To empower you in your focus to appreciate, nurture, and support your caregiver heroes, download a copy of Custom Learning’s Operation Uplift Team Organization Charter.

The charter provides all kinds of best practices to help you bring and create a positive culture where you work. It includes an assessment tool and dozens of best practices to improve morale, attitude, and self-care. It also addresses COVID fatigue and retention and includes a reference library of our Caregiver Heroes videos, TED talks, recommended reading, and more.

Now let’s go spread kindness care everywhere.

Please visit our YouTube channel for more information on this topic at https://www.youtube.com/user/Customlearningsue.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to improve their patients’ overall experience. We understand the time constraints in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the necessary skills to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

• How to Lead Inspiring Meetings
• How to Connect With Humor at the Workplace
• Show Employee Appreciation by Noticing, Recognizing, and Appreciating

Consider this question: Why won’t patients give you honest patient feedback and tell you how they really feel about you while they’re under your care and control? Well, it’s because they’re under your care and supervision.

Think about it this way: Do you ever bother complaining about the food in a restaurant? Most people don’t, because what might happen to that food on the way back from the kitchen? There’ll be a new, invisible, moist crust.

Patients are very uncomfortable giving direct feedback. Nursing managers say this all the time, “I don’t get it. I talk with my patients, I ask how they’re doing, they say they love us, and then I get evaluation feedback, and they don't love us! What’s going on here?”.

When it comes to direct patient feedback, most people won't give you the truth. People are not comfortable being seen as a troublemaker.

Perception is deception. The way you think you’re doing may not be how your patients see you, which is why evaluations are so critical.

Five Questions to Ask About Patient Feedback

1. Do you know your latest patient satisfaction scores?
2. Do you know how the scores have changed since the previous report?
3. What are the top two things your patients say that you do best?
4. What are your top two patient dissatisfiers? What upsets your patients the most?
5. Do the people who report to you know the number one dissatisfier for their patients?

These questions are critical to your success. If your hospital staff members don’t know the answers to these questions, then you won’t be able to move forward and improve your patient feedback or win back patients.

It’s your role as a leader to educate your people to know and inspire them to care.

“The speed of the leader is the speed of the team.”

The Importance of Star Ratings

Never underestimate the importance of star ratings. Consider the following:

• A rating of 1 or 2 is a Zone of Defection.
• A rating of 3 or 4 is a Zone of Indifference.
• A rating of 5 out of 5 is a Zone of Affection.

Star ratings are essential. When people are searching for services, they can filter their search by star ratings. If your hospital has a lackluster star rating or a poor online reputation, your patient intake will reflect this.

Getting five stars means consistently meeting or managing patients’ expectations with kindness, care everywhere, which should always be the goal.

A study done by PressGaney, the largest patient survey vendor in the United States, found that there is no profitability unless you’re rated a four out of four, which is five stars. It is very hard to have a positive margin if you don’t have a positive star rating, so keep that in mind.

Good Patient Feedback Gets Your Hospital Ahead

By engaging, shifting, and educating your hospital staff members to implement best practices, you can improve your patient feedback and star rating.

A one-point improvement in your overall hospital rating equals a .4% profit margin increase. These funds can help your hospital get ahead. As the patient experience improves, operating margins improve, and nurse turnover goes down.

The patient experience makes a difference, draws your people, and gives you a competitive advantage. By putting the right strategies in place to improve patient satisfaction, your hospital can reap the rewards.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

Why You Should Be Promoting Your Hospital As COVID-19 Compliant
The Importance of Having a Culture of Engagement
How to Ask for a Referral in Healthcare: The Power of Patient Referrals

The new normal is upon us, and it’s drastically changing how we go about healthcare, interact with each patient, and even win back patients.

Now more than ever, we have to focus on patient satisfaction.

With so many changes upon us, we must learn how to lead in the new normal. It’s crucial now more than ever to give our leaders timely leadership education that will help them be agile leaders.

So how do we do that?

What Do We Need to Know to Lead in the New Normal?

1. Empathy

We need to teach our leaders how to provide caregiver empathy when so many of our staff suffer from COVID-19 fatigue.

Remember: staff members play a vital role in a hospital. To lead in the new normal and win back patients, you have to actively work to support your staff members, particularly during these challenging times. Learn more about the vital role staff members play in a hospital here.

2. Adjusting to Change

We are in an era now of constant, frequent, perpetual, radical change, and we need to teach our leaders how to gain buy-in from anybody or anything.

3. Agility, Influence, and Persuasion

We need to teach leaders agility, influence, and persuasion. These are the new skills in the new era of pandemics.

How to Gain a Buy-in From Anybody for Anything

The number one reason change initiatives fail is lack of buy-in. There are five steps to gain a buy-in. Here they are.

1. Conduct a subject briefing

Get your people together in a classroom. Spend 10-15 minutes with them and outline everything they need to know about how it works.

2. Buddy people up

After the briefing, pair up all the attendees. When you have a positive attitude and a negative attitude together in a buddy team, the positive attitude will always overwhelm the negative.

3. Assign a discussion

Have the buddies talk about three benefits of the new idea and one barrier.

4. Debrief

People start to buy-in when they begin to see new, positive benefits and realize that it will help them in their life. When the barriers come up, have them brainstorm right then and there on how to overcome that barrier.

5. Take action

When you’re done debriefing, talk about who will do what by when, and how.

Create a Five-Star Healthcare Experience for Everyone

Educate your brightest and best as outreach safety ambassadors. Johns Hopkins Medicine calls them Trusted Messengers.

If people aren’t coming to the hospital, you have to go to the community. Remember: people don’t trust hospitals and doctors, or less so than they did before.

We need to go where they are, and we need to get the message out. To lead in the new normal, we have to get out and let people know that we are their center of excellence. We are an oasis of kindness and healing.

Recruit your brightest and best frontline employees. Pick people with positive attitudes—people who will walk the talk and are passionate about the subject. In teams of four, have them go out and speak to churches and service clubs, and associations.

Think about three initiatives:

1. Education of inspiration on how to win back patients
2. How to lead in the new normal
3. Creating a safe, five-star experience

Outreach Projects to Win Back Patients

1. Safety Ambassadors

Safety ambassadors could be physicians: advanced care practitioners, board trustees, or members of your patient-family advisory council.

2. Make Your Entryway Welcoming

Perception = deception. Remember, the way we see ourselves may not be the way our patients or customers see us. The old cliché is true: you never get a second chance to make a positive first impression.

Is your entryway a welcoming entrance or a barricade? Make the best of your current situation. Create a contest for the best, most creative mask, or the best, most creative badge. Anything that will make a patient’s entrance more welcoming.

3. Access

How easy is it for patients to navigate access?

Let’s begin with assuming your patients are “reluctant customers.” Unless they are coming to the hospital for a tummy tuck, a facelift, or to deliver a baby, they don’t want to be there.

Use photo badges and appoint a safe, simple, access task force. Put a team together representing admitting, ER, and other various departments.

4. Safety Culture Project

How difficult are you making it for patients to get onsite? Start a Safety Culture Project and teach sentence starters to everyone.

Begin with entrance greeters (not screeners). It could be as simple as saying, ‘welcome to our hospital; we’re so glad you’ve chosen the safest place in town for your care.”

5. Create a Video

Using just your smartphone, create a video. Get a team together of four or five frontline employees and create a video called “100 Reasons Why We’re the Safest Place in Town”.

Instead of downloading brochures and long lists of all the things you’ve done, have a fun three-minute video and post it on your website, on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram.

6. Virtual Safety Tour

Have your chief nurse officer record two or three minutes explaining why the place is safe. Post this on your website, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and any other socials.

Talk about the cleaning that you do, your outpatient services, and any new protocols.

7. Ask Patients About Their Visit

What if you asked every patient, “folks, thanks for choosing us; on the way out the door, we’d sure like to ask if you’d record a 30-second video. I’ll ask you a question about why you chose us and why you came back”.

Most people, when asked nicely, will say yes. This turns your patients into campaign workers for you. These will go viral in the community and go a long way to help you win back patients.

8. Ask for Referrals

Never underestimate the power of a patient referral!

If you're not asking for referrals, you're missing out on ways to improve both your hospital's reputation and intake. Referrals don't cost anything, and they're easy to do. For help on how to ask for a referral, check out this blog post.

Now let's go spread Kindness Care, Everywhere!

Reimagining Healthcare Engagement Summit

In June, we are holding a special one-day summit called “Reimagining Healthcare Engagement,” which will be 100% live streaming. Register to learn more about how to refresh the workplace through resilience, agility, and kindness.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

If you are interested in patient care, check out these articles!

Why is Patient Satisfaction so Important?
Non-Verbal Communication is the Key to Great Patient Care
A Positive Attitude is Key to Great Patient Care

Do you know how to win back patients?

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it costs seven times more to go out and get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. CMS states that one patient is worth $3,047 a year, but the customer’s lifetime value is astronomical.

This is why we don’t want to lose patients. It’s also why it is so important to know how to win back every single patient.

To Win Back Patients, You Have to Shift Focus Back to the Patient

To win back patients in a hospital, you have to focus on patient satisfaction. But while it is vital to ignite caregiver engagement to create a 5-star patient experience, it is also crucial to reigniting caregiver engagement to win back every single patient.

There’s no doubting that COVID-19 has left everyone feeling stressed out about even stepping foot into a hospital. A study came out by the Alliance of Community Health Plans that said 42% of consumers feel uncomfortable going to a hospital for an in-person medical treatment, especially when there is a surge.

Patient satisfaction is vital to the success of a hospital (learn why here). This is why it’s time to shift focus back to the patient. It’s time to reignite your thinking, to reignite where you’re going, and to reignite the patient experience.

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” - C.S. Lewis.

Try to think about this journey in three steps.

1. Mobilize response
2. Fast track regaining lost ground
3. Refocus on growth

The Reignite, Win Back initiative

To reignite is to reset our thinking.

It’s essential to start thinking about the concept of how to win back patients and educate your people on how to do that. Here are some tips.

Resilience and You

It all starts with you. Make a challenge to commit to being the best you can be because what is the alternative to being your best? It’s average. It’s mediocre.

It’s little things that count, whether it be getting your pain meds on time, getting timely test results, and more. Knowing what “excellent care” means to our patients is a huge thing. And a part of this care comes from mindful listening. This means honoring our patients by really listening to them.

Resilience is all about surviving and thriving. It’s also about inspiration.

Reputation Recovery

Reputation recovery is a great way to win back patients and should be a core capability.

It is paramount to be an active listener whenever you hear a complaint about your hospital’s service. Do not use those two killer words that ruin relationships “Yes, but…”.

There are two options when people have a complaint.

You can agree with them, hear them out, and say, “Wow, that sounds awful. I don’t blame you for being upset; I’d be upset too.’

But what if the complaint doesn’t sound right? What if your gut says it couldn’t have been that way? Let them be right. Allow them to retain their dignity by saying, “I can see why you feel that way” or “maybe you’re right.”

Then it’s time to pivot.

Say: “Have you been to the hospital lately? It’s a different place; it’s a better place.” “Would you like to come by for a tour?” “Would you like to come by for a coffee?” Would you like to come by and meet our Chief Nursing Officer?”. Whether they accept or not, the fact that you’ve invited them, the fact that you’ve honored them by hearing them out, you have become their referral source.

Is there any doubt in your mind that they will tell others about you and about this newfound discovery that your hospital is a better place?

What if every caregiver did this once a week? You’d be surprised by how far it can go in building a stunning new reputation. It’s like a Reputation Renaissance.

Here are a few essential things to do when it comes to Reputation Recovery:

1. Make reputation recovery a core capability.
2. Start a Chief Influence Officer (C.I.O.) club. We want to make everybody that works at your hospital a Chief Influence Officer. Make sure their primary focus is patient satisfaction.

Safety Culture

This pandemic has people worried and scared. People are afraid of in-person care. Firstly, we have to educate our phone reception, our ER, imaging, physician, lab, billing, and every other staff member.

Always tell the patient what you can do, not what you can’t do. It’s got to be about what is possible.

This is why sentence starts are so important. These are positive, constructive ways to communicate with your patients. They also go a long way with patient satisfaction.

Your greeters should be people who have a personality and have a welcoming name badge. They should also use AIDET.

AIDET is an acronym for Acknowledge the patient, Introduce yourself, Duration (tell them how long you’ll be with them), Explain what you’re doing to them, and Thank them.

How to Lead in the New Normal

We need to teach our leaders how to provide caregiver empathy when so many of our staff suffer from COVID-19 fatigue. We are in an era of constant, frequent, perpetual, radical change, and we need to teach our leaders how to gain a buy-in from anybody or anything. Then we need to teach them agility, influence, and persuasion. These are the new skills in the new era of pandemics.

Leaders should also fast-track a safe five-star experience for everyone.

Educate your brightest and best as outreach safety ambassadors. Recruit your brightest and best frontline employees. Pick people with positive attitudes - those staff members who have a kind of way about them and are passionate about the subject.

We want you to think about three initiatives:

1. Education of inspiration on how to win back patients
2. How to lead in the new normal
3. Create a 5-star experience

Outreach Projects to Get the Community Back

1. Create safety ambassadors
2. Start a safety culture project teaching sentence starters to everyone.
3. Do a virtual safety tour.
4. Create videos asking patients why they chose you and why they would come back
5. Hold a Customer Service Academy for everybody in your market area,

Our ‘Do it’ Recommendations

1. Educate and empower everyone to serve as a Chief Influence Officer
2. Charter an easy access task force
3. Commit to excellence - learn one new idea every day and do it in a better way.
4. Make reputation recovery a core capability.
5. Fast-track a safety culture by the use of sentence starters.
6. Unleash your trusted leaders to serve as Safety Ambassadors
7. To win back patients, go out and speak in the community.
8. Have a win-back marketing campaign.

Now let's go spread Kindness Care, Everywhere!

Reimagining Healthcare Engagement Summit

In June, we are holding a special one-day summit called “Reimagining Healthcare Engagement,” which will be 100% live streaming. Register to learn more about how to refresh the workplace through resilience, agility, and kindness.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

If you are interested in patient care, check out these articles!

How to Ask for a Referral in Healthcare: The Power of Patient Referrals
Why All Hospital Staff Members Play a Vital Role in a Hospital,
A Positive Attitude is Key to Great Patient Care

Non-verbal communication in a hospital is one of the best tellers of how a patient or caregiver is feeling.

This may come as a surprise to you. After all, how can you tell how a patient is feeling without talking to them? How can a patient read you or assume something about the level of your care if you’re not communicating verbally?

Well, it all comes down to the body.

When it Comes to Non-Verbal Communication, Your Body Never Lies

Non-verbal communication is key. Why? Because the body never lies.

That is the absolute key to non-verbal communication.

Remember: words make up 7 % of communication. Tone makes up 38 % and non-verbal cues make up 55 % of communication.

So how do we communicate other than the spoken word? We do this through:

• Eye contact

• Body language

• Facial expressions

• Smile

• Clothing

• Empathy

• Non-verbal sounds

• Appearance

• Hair

• Personal

• Laughter

• Tone of voice

• Compassion

• Attitude

The Importance of Understanding Non-Verbal Communication Cues

It is essential to both understand and educate yourself on non-verbal cues. These cues can offer all sorts of opportunities to connect and create a respectful relationship with hospital patients. Some of these cues include gestures, breath patterns, flushed faces, and dilated pupils

These cues all tell a story to a healthcare professional. They offer opportunities for us to understand how a patient is feeling.

Another crucially important non-verbal cue that you should always have on your mind is your touch. Do you have a caring touch?

A caring touch both communicates and reinforces caring feelings. A caring touch can include placing a hand over a patient's hand or gently placing an arm around a patient's shoulder.

Tactile contact also varies considerably among individuals and families. This is why it is important to be sensitive to differences in attitudes and cultural practices. You may notice that some families are touchy-feely while others aren't. These differences should govern how we communicate with our patients.

The Benefits of Non-Verbal Communication

As an essential element of patient care, non-verbal communication has many different benefits to both patients and healthcare providers. Some of these include:

• Helps you become more aware when having conversations with patients

• Increases intimacy

• Improves empathy

• Improves compassion

It All Starts With a Smile

Never underestimate the importance of a smile.

Remember: Patients are always looking at us. They are watching and reading every breath and step we take. They are watching our body language, our non-verbal cues, the way we present ourselves, and everything in between.

Our ‘Do it’ Recommendations

1. Remember that your patients are always watching and reading you from the moment you enter the room.

2. Be sure to read your patients.

3. Give information to patients in terms and language they can understand.

Now let's go spread Kindness Care, Everywhere!

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos that can help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

If you are interested in patient care, check out these articles!

Why All Hospital Staff Members Play a Vital Role in a Hospital
A Positive Attitude is Key to Great Patient Care
Why is Patient Satisfaction So Important

What would be the value if you could learn the 12 imperatives of caregiver inspiration and do it all in ten minutes or less?

Caregiver inspiration is all about inspiring others and leading by. If you’re interested in the 12 different ways to provide caregiver inspiration, you’ve reached the right place.

Here’s everything you need to know about inspiring the caregivers and the hospital staff members around you.

The 12 Imperatives of Caregiver Inspiration

1. Inspire 5-Star Patient Kindness

Inspire patient kindness by telling stories of your contribution to others that go above and beyond.

When you tell a story, it captures people’s imagination. It’s possible, supportive, and can help them through difficult times.

2. Selflessness

One question that will guarantee your role as an inspirational leader is: “am I more concerned about myself or others?”. When you’re concerned about yourself, it’s about ego, but when you’re concerned about others, it’s selfless.

When you show concern about others, you focus on service to others.

3. Your Staff Members Are Stars

If you want your people to perform like stars, you must first help them see themselves as stars. You must believe in them. You must bring out the confidence of people who struggle with low self-esteem.

Show them that you care about them and believe in them.

4. Lead By Example

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”

5. Lead WIth Purpose

People want to know ‘the why’ behind ‘the how.’ You need to stand up for your values and your beliefs and do just that - lead with purpose.

6. Lead By Wandering Around

Find time every day as a leader to check in with your people. Be curious about how they’re doing. Ask them questions about their lives and be there for them.

Be a brilliant conversationalist by listening to them and talking about their lives.

7. Notice, Recognize and Appreciate

The number one reason people leave their jobs is that they don’t feel valued and appreciated.

Remember, things that get recognized and rewarded get repeated.

8. Embrace Humor in the Workplace

The team that plays together stays together. The more we can create sticky, humorous relationships between colleagues, the better.

9. Lead Inspiring Meetings

Always open meetings with good news.

Have everybody share something positive that has happened in their lives, personal or professional.

End every meeting with ‘good of the patient.’ Invite people to share the best idea or insight that will enhance service to the patient.

10. Have a Good Attitude

“Based upon our attitude, we can bring joy or misery.” Be positive, and your staff members will be positive too.

11. Perpetually Motivate Your Caregiver Heroes

Motivate your caregivers. Have them create five-minute videos about what inspires them.

12. “We cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good that we can do.”

Caregiver inspiration is about trying to do good. Always.

Download the Operation Uplift Team Organization Charter Today

To empower you in your focus to appreciate, nurture, and support your caregiver heroes, download a copy of Custom Learning’s Operation Uplift Team Organization Charter.

The charter provides all kinds of best practices to help you bring and create a positive culture where you work. It includes an assessment tool and dozens of best practices to improve morale, attitude, and self-care. It also addresses COVID fatigue and retention and includes a reference library of our Caregiver Heroes videos, TED talks, recommended reading, and more.

Now let’s go spread kindness care everywhere.

Please visit our YouTube channel for more information on this topic at https://www.youtube.com/user/Customlearningsue.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to improve their patients’ overall experience. We understand the time constraints in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the necessary skills to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

• How to Inspire, Motivate, and Engage Caregivers
• How to Fix Your Attitude and Defeat Negativity
• How to Improve Your Hospital Ratings Using the Star Struck Factor

Having a culture of engagement is a critical factor in achieving a five-star experience. It is also the biggest impediment to moving to a five-star experience.

It takes three years to change a culture, and it all starts with taking care of your caregiver.

To Create a Culture of Engagement, Start With Your Caregivers

All hospital staff members play a vital role in a hospital. According to PressGaney, a 1% change in employee morale equals a 2% change in the patient experience. Happy employees equal happy customers.

Remember: disgruntled employees result in unhappy patients.

Service Recovery

To create a culture of engagement, we must also practice service recovery. All employees should make it a part of their daily practice that when they “mess up, they fess up, and dress up.”

When we make this a part of our practice, habits, and culture, it displaces the old behaviors and becomes our cultural practice.

Culture change means consistently practicing new behaviors. It takes three years for a hugely complex organization to make these changes, which is why we have to stay focused on it.

If we want empowerment, we’ve got to create a culture of engagement. You have to continue to educate leadership, educate the frontline, and hardwire best practices. It’s all about the execution of the strategy.

The Attitudes of Engagement

Did you know that there are five types of attitudes working in hospitals?

1. Superstars: 3% of the workplace.
2. Winners: 20% - they come early, they stay late, they’re positive, they want to get ahead, and they want to make a difference.
3. Grinners: 50% - they are just sitting on the fence. They’re here for a paycheck. They're not here to change the world,
4. Whiners: 25% - everything’s wrong, nothing’s right. They want something for nothing. They do as much as they can to do as little as they can. They’re negative, and they’re often proud of their negativity.
5. Slugs: Between 2 and 10% of the workforce - they shouldn’t be there, but we keep them there because they’re live, warm bodies.

It is crucial to have a positive attitude in health care. To create a culture of engagement that brings about a five-star experience, we have to work on who we have employed. The slugs have to go. Whiners have an opportunity to change their behaviors, which is why we have something called corrective action coaching. We can help the grinners turn into winners through education and culture change.

What do you think is your attitude of engagement?

Never Be Silent About Negative Behaviour

As a leader, your role is to understand your employees, where they fit in their roles, and how you can create a culture of engagement. Silence about negative behavior implies approval of negative behavior.

It is your role to notice these things and have confidential coaching sessions about them. Silence, when it comes to this issue, means consent. You need to use your code of conduct as a living tool to choose staff better. It should orient staff better, educate staff better, recognize and appreciate staff better, do better performance evaluations, and to above all, have a more thoughtful tool for discipline.

Negative behavior is not complementary to wellness and healing.

The Service Empowerment Leadership Course

A hospital environment must have a great leader, so it is vital to allow everybody to get into a classroom and learn how to be a leader, more than just being a manager.

We call this the Service Empowerment Leadership Course.

Reimagining Healthcare Engagement Summit

In June, we are holding a special one-day summit called “Reimagining Healthcare Engagement,” which will be 100% live streaming. Register to learn more about how to refresh the workplace through resilience, agility, and kindness.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

How to Lead in the New Normal
Non-Verbal Communication is the Key to Great Patient Care
How to Win Back Every Single Patient

Did you know that one of the best ways to provide excellent patient care is by following up with them?

That’s right! One of the biggest secrets to avoiding bad reviews is taking a proactive approach and regularly following up with your patients. 

Following up with your patients plays a critical role in patient care and the overall patient experience. It shows patients that they are more than just a number to you - they’re someone who has needs after your care. Following up with patients helps build deeper, more personal relationships with them and significantly improves your chances of getting a five-star rating.

Many patients require ongoing treatment, and timely follow-ups ensure that they move forward and become healthy again as soon as possible. Patient follow-ups also minimize liability concerns.

So, how does taking a proactive approach help patients, and what role does it play in avoiding 

Why Following Up is Key to Great Patient Care 

When you don't take a proactive approach to patient care, it can jeopardize a patient's health and put you at risk for medical malpractice.

Think about it this way: if you fail to follow up with patients who come in for testing and the patient’s symptoms get worse - possibly turning into a serious ailment or even cancer - not only do you jeopardize the patient’s health, but you put your practice at risk as well.

It is critical to follow specific steps when following up with patients to avoid the above risks. Following these steps can go a long way in avoiding bad reviews and improving your star ratings and patients’ lives. 

Patient Follow-Up Tips

Add these tips to your everyday routine to ensure you follow up with patients and provide them with the best patient experience possible.

• Create an appointment reminder process - send reminders one day before an appointment.
• Set up a process to follow up on missed appointments and test results.
• Develop a system for communicating with specialists you refer patients to.
• Develop a follow-up system to track tests you have yet to receive results for.
• Document all appointments with patients.
• Create a follow-up phone call routine with each patient.
• Send new patients a patient satisfaction survey and follow up with them to determine if they were satisfied with their visit.

Following up with patients ensures that they move along with your treatment plan. This increases their likelihood of recovering and can help you address anything they didn't understand, answer questions, adjust treatment, and more.

Patient follow-up also builds loyalty and leaves a lasting impression, especially for new patients. It shows patients that you care and helps develop more personal relationships between you and your patients. bad reviews? 

Read on to learn more.

Follow-ups are critical to good patient care and positive ratings. Be proactive and follow up with your patients.

Connect Directly to Your Patients and Interact Instantly with CareSay 

With CareSay Pro, you can connect directly with your patients and interact instantly. CareSay provides you with a way to efficiently track all communication with your patients. 

This service is low cost and gives you a way to analyze your data and track real-time feedback. Most importantly, CareSay gives you actionable feedback so you can make a difference in the healthcare you deliver. 

But don’t take it from us. Check out CareSay reviews here and get started today!

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

• How to Fix Your Attitude and Defeat Negativity

• How to Lead Inspiring Meetings

• How to Connect With Humor at the Workplace

COVID-19 compliance has become one of the number one factors when it comes to hospital referrals.

A recent study done among 7000 patients by a Boston consulting group has found that you can influence up to 50% of patients returning for elective surgery if you certify that your facility is COVID-19 compliant.

To get ahead of the game and focus on getting those hospital referrals, you must start ensuring that your hospital is 100% COVID-19 compliant.

One way to get the word out about your hospital’s COVID-19 compliance is by downloading a certificate that says you are COVID-19 compliant. Learn more about the importance of COVID-19 compliance in your hospital below.

How Does COVID-19 Compliance Impact Hospital Referrals?

Patients want to know that they will be safe when they come into a hospital. Most people are highly fearful about COVID-19. They fear catching it, and they specifically fear going to hospitals, where the chances of contracting COVID-19 are much higher.

By educating managers to lead in the new normal and focus on COVID-19 compliance, we can better engage with our frontline workers and win back every patient.

In addition to COVID-19 compliance, another great way to get hospital referrals and win back patients is to reignite caregiver engagement and unleash their influence in the community - starting with family and friends.

Capabilities to Regain Lost Patient Volumes and Grow

Here are steps to gain more hospital referrals, win back patients, and ensure that all hospital staff and facilities are COVID-19 compliant.

1. Educate and Empower Everyone to serve as a C. I. O. (“Chief Influence Officer”)

2. Charter an “Easy Access Task Force.” Plan and coordinate convenient patient and family access to the hospital and offsite facilities.

3. Commit to Excellence. Learn one new idea every day and do it in a better way.

4. Make reputation recovery a core competency.

5. Fast-track a cultural DNA of “Being a Safe, 5-Star Healthcare Experience” through sentence starters used by everyone, everywhere.

6. Educate and empower leaders with state-of-the-art competent people skills.

7. Unleash your trusted leaders to serve as safety ambassadors.

8. Include the following in your win-back marketing campaign:

• A full-page print advertisement

• Have key leaders record YouTube and Facebook videos

• Invite patients to record “Why I came Back” testimonials videos

• Schedule a live streaming Customer Academy

9. Request Your Win-Back Tool Kit now

10. Join us for the Annual HealthCare Service Excellence Conference 2021 to learn how to overcome all the practical and cultural challenges to improving the patient experience. Discover yourself an implementable prescription for frontline, leadership, and patient engagement at this year's conference.

Now let's go spread Kindness Care, Everywhere!

Reimagining Healthcare Engagement Summit

In June, we are holding a special one-day summit called “Reimagining Healthcare Engagement,” which will be 100% live streaming. Register to learn more about how to refresh the workplace through resilience, agility, and kindness.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

Non-Verbal Communication is the Key to Great Patient Care
Why All Hospital Staff Members Play a Vital Role in a Hospital
A Positive Attitude is Key to Great Patient Care

Your hospital’s online reputation is vital to its success, and the key to having an excellent online reputation is ensuring that there is always a great patient experience.

Reputation.com did a study of 4800 hospitals. They found that it will bring your scores up by 17% if you have a good online reputation.

On the other hand, if you have a poor online reputation, it’s three times more likely to fall. Your ratings have become a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is why you need to start thinking about the patient experience and how to improve it.

Using the Patient Experience to Improve Your Online Reputation

Have you ever wondered why patients won’t tell you how they honestly feel about you while they’re under your care and control?

Think about it this way: do you bother complaining about the food in a restaurant? Most people don’t because they fear what might happen to that food on the way back from the kitchen. There’ll be a new, invisible, moist crust.

Patients are very uncomfortable giving direct feedback. People are not comfortable being seen as a trouble maker. Remember: perception is deception. The way you think you’re doing may not be the way your patients see you. They’re very uncomfortable giving you that honest, direct feedback, which is why evaluations are so essential to understand the patient experience.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself About the Patient Experience

1. Do you know your latest patient satisfaction scores?
2. Do you know how the scores have changed since the previous report? How did they change in the last quarter?
3. What are the top two things your patients say that you do best?
4. What are your top two patient dissatisfiers?
5. What is your number one dissatisfier, and what are you doing to eliminate it?

“The speed of the leader is the speed of the team.”

It’s your role as a leader to educate your staff and inspire them to care.

Why Five-Star Ratings Are so Important to Your Online Reputation

A five-star rating is where you will find your loyalty. Five-star ratings keep and win patients back.

To get five-star ratings, you have to consistently meet or manage patients’ expectations with kindness and care everywhere, which should always be the goal.

What makes the difference, and what gives you a competitive advantage, is the patient experience. As the patient experience improves, operating margins improve. And as patient experience improves, nurse turnover goes down.

How to Get a Five-Star Patient Experience

1. Patient Engagement

Internal customer experience matters. One great way to improve patient engagement is through “chat time.”

One of the best things that you can do is make time to sit with a patient. This daily “chat time” touches patients and shows them that you care. When it comes to patient engagement, relationships come first, and business second.

Ask your patients about their kids or their grandkids. Ask them about their family. Be curious about them and connect with them on a personal level. Create a relationship first and get down to business after.

2. Listen

Be a brilliant conversationalist. Ask yourself every day, “what do I know about the patient that is not on their chart?”. The key is to listen with all of yourself and your heart. Don’t judge because when people feel judged, they judge you back.

Ask your patients questions about their lives. Be curious. Listen to them. Show them you care.

3. Be Kind

People begin to heal the moment they feel heard. When they feel seen and heard, they start to heal. Begin every work shift as a kindness shift.

Personalize a patient’s experience. Create a care board asking, “what would good care mean for you today?” and post responses on the care board. Always have a positive attitude and show your kindness to all your patients.

Power of the Word of Mouth

There are only two ways to grow market share: new services and word of mouth. Advertising will not bring back people who don’t like you, which is why you should never underestimate the power of word of mouth.

Referrals matter. Mark Zuckerberg said, “People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences more people than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the holy grail of advertising”. Learn how to ask for referrals here.

84% of us trust recommendations from family and friends, but 88% trust online reviews more than family and friends.

You have 100% control over your influence when the patient is under your roof. Once they’re gone, it’s 0%.

Three Ways Your Patients Show Loyalty

There are three ways that patients show their loyalty:

1. They say they’re very satisfied with their experience.
2. They come back.
3. They recommend you to others.

If you provide a patient experience that they enjoy and appreciate, they will come back. The challenge now is to win back patients who have left you.

Remember: everyone is a caregiver. Being a caregiver is about treating customers like they are family and friends.

How do we treat someone like our kids or a neighbor? It’s an attitude of gratitude. It’s a sense of appreciation.

Embrace the practice that everyone is a caregiver.

Now let's go spread Kindness Care, Everywhere!

Reimagining Healthcare Engagement Summit

In June, we are holding a special one-day summit called “Reimagining Healthcare Engagement,” which will be 100% live streaming. Register to learn more about how to refresh the workplace through resilience, agility, and kindness.

Everyone’s a Caregiver: Providing Education for Healthcare Workers

Everyone's a Caregiver provides education to healthcare workers to better improve their patient's overall experience. We understand the time constraints placed in today's workplace and have customized microlearning videos to help you gain the skills you need to be a better, more positive healthcare worker. Contact us today to see how we can help, or click here to learn more.

Are you interested in patient care? Check out these articles!

How to Win Back Every Single Patient
Non-Verbal Communication is the Key to Great Patient Care
Why All Hospital Staff Members Play a Vital Role in a Hospital