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The Often Overlooked Clinician Element in Patient Experience

energesseIt’s not the narrow furrow of compensation plans, salary scales or allowances that keeps the doctors on the right side of patient experience.

It’s the broader view of ‘engagement’ – actions that invite doctors into the fold of strategic and operational plans, perhaps training that allows them to engage fully and more effectively in their purpose or asking the right questions around THEIR daily experience at the hospital.

A highly engaged clinician feels connected to their purpose and aligned to their career, their place of work, and their colleagues. As a result, they are able to approach each patient as an individual with physical, mental and emotional needs and cater their care around these needs.

The Greenslopes Private Hospital Network (GPHN) in Queensland did a great job at clinician engagement recently. We helped them undertake a research project around understanding the level of satisfaction among 300 junior doctors’ within the GPHN training programme.

We helped them design an online survey, choose its mediums, analyse and benchmark survey outcomes and provide recommendations for their training programme, based on the comments and suggestions made by the doctors.

There were some great wins in the form of a 50% response rate (highly unusual!), responses that exceeded expectations in quantity and quality, and useful feedback (nothing was held back!) about every element of the GPHN training programme.

Yes, our Energesse survey techniques worked. In addition, Greenslopes did these right:

  • They had already been building a foundation of transparent and honest communication between doctors and the HR management team
  • All doctors were informed about the survey from the beginning and its purpose was communicated well and frequently
  • A number of follow-up calls were made to some key doctors – who were then more than likely to have ‘spread the word’
  • Doctors who had already left Greenslopes for several years also responded to the survey
  • Upon completion, the GPHN Management thanked the doctors for their feedback and reiterated how they were going to use the responses and next steps
  • There was also one clear overall result – the GPHN private training programme had higher ratings when benchmarked against Australian public hospital training programme ratings

The survey was not compulsory, but there was a strong connection between the doctors and the management that kept them engaged enough in GPHN’s purpose to listen, to understand and to respond.

Jim Houston, the Director of Medical Services at Greenslopes, was very happy with the results. Here’s his testimonial. He is also presenting the outcomes at the upcoming Workforce Planning Healthcare Conference on the 5th of December 2016.

Here are a number of ways we can help you reach out to YOUR clinicians:

  • Research (surveys, interviews, focus groups) around clinician thoughts, needs and opinions
  • Training workshops to align clinicians to hospital goals such as patient experience
  • Granular monitoring of patient experience outcomes in real-time through our MES Technology

We would be happy to give you an overview via a presentation at your team meeting or grand round (monthly meeting). Just send me an email.

 

About the Author: Dr Avnesh Ratnanesan

Dr Avi is a medical doctor with broad healthcare sector experience including hospitals, biotech, pharmaceuticals and the wellness industry. He is a leading expert who coaches and consults to senior executives, entrepreneurs, practitioners, organisations and governments.