One size does not fit all. Ensuring a positive experience for children and their parents/guardians is essential for strategically building patient trust. Today, building that trust is also financially imperative. How do parents and guardians view their child’s care?
Participation in the Child HCAHPS survey is voluntary. However, it provides invaluable feedback that hospitals can use to improve benchmarks and continuously improve operational processes. Below are 3 key focal points for achieving a positive experience and glowing feedback from your little patients and their parents or guardians!
Familiarity
Allowing patient historical information to drive your conversation breeds familiarity.
When you remember a child’s favorite food, nickname…or even their teddy bear’s name, you will make an instant connection and undoubtedly affect the overall outcome of the patient and family experience. This personal knowledge enhances the caring approach and provides a certain level of trust and projects empathy.
“It hurts” are two words a parent never wants to hear their child say, especially while in the hospital. Clear and concise electronic documentation of the child’s pain management process is important. Noting and reviewing the patient/family input each day will allow you to customize your approach before entering the room. Mobile rounding technology makes interacting with actionable resolutions easy and consistent.
Knowing personal information about each of your patients will give you an instant advantage. Having personal preferences and notes at your fingertips makes interacting with purpose easy.
Engaging
Providing the child a voice creates opportunities for them to participate in their care.
Each child’s needs may vary depending on age and illness. We should actively engage with the child as a consumer with a valid voice and viewpoint.
Let’s face it, kids are technology hounds! Engaging them (especially the teens) with the technology will help them be a part of their own experience. The CLARIFIRE HEALTH® rounding app provides you the functionality to add your notes (even voice to text) from the child’s level/viewpoint, addressing both the needs of the child and caregiver.
In addition, the big, bright buttons and quick gesturing are eye-catching and sophisticated – which will undoubtedly raise curiosity. When you click the buttons, you can say see, the iPad is doing the work for you and keeping track of what you shared, not only with the patient but with the family and the hospital system. You can even let the child dictate a note, like I love my nurse! You can say, see the app just placed an order for ice cream for your teddy bear.
Action
Focusing on action, by embedding technology into the culture of your facility, provides a consistent source of information that is critical to empathic care.
The CLARIFIRE HEALTH mobile app sits atop an incredibly robust workflow engine. Having this integral technology at your fingertips illustrates to the patient and/or family a culture of quick action and visibility into resolutions.
Service escalation functionality provides real time, proactive issue resolution, cutting out communication gaps and time. You may receive an action plan or resolution while still working with the patient and/or family! The ‘electronic sticky note’ utility allows you to send yourself a note directly from the app – eliminating the dreaded scraps of paper in your pockets – and making you look tech savvy. Use talk to text without losing eye contact, so your patient can hear what you are saying.
Additionally, real-time dashboard updates and robust reporting provide critical insight into areas that may need improvement. These areas are provided by the patient during your daily conversations. In turn, you will have captured the impact of your improvements, eventually building long term trust and credibility with your patient/family population.
The bottom line is effective, empathetic, personal communication will ultimately create a positive family perception of care and top notch results in no time! Remember using easy-to-use technology and including both the family and patient can make all the difference!
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Lauren Walling
Lauren Walling is a graduate of Emory University with a degree in Industrial Psychology, as well as an MBA from the John Sykes School of Business from The University of Tampa. She currently sits on the Board of Fellows at the University of Tampa, and is a member of the Healthcare Business Women's Association, National Association of Professional Women, and the Morton Plant Skip Cline Society. Lauren works with large Healthcare Systems implementing Patient Experience Solutions that streamline processes, increase patient experience and improve quality and safety.
