Individual Behaviors, Not Programs, Drive Patient Safety and the Patient Experience

For all the money spent on “programs” and training, how many of our hospitals, clinics and physician practices really have the highly patient-centered, collaborative culture they envision or have successfully eliminated most if not all avoidable patient harms? 

What’s Missing?  – The Behaviors that Drive Personal Interactions.  The patient experience, patient safety, and how well people collaborate is driven by interpersonal interactions.  The patient experience is made up of the dozens of daily interactions from the admissions staff, to nursing, support staff, environmental services, dietary workers, and physicians.  You don’t create a safety culture with programs.  Universal precautions only help to reduce hospital-acquired infections when staff use them.  Similarly, you don’t create a patient-centered culture with scripting and signs.  Until staff change the way they behave toward patients, families and each other, the culture won’t change. 

Changing behaviors begins with indentifying and understanding individual behavioral tendencies that impact patient safety and the patient experience, including emotional intelligence, in a healthcare context.  We need to augment process-oriented training with individually-focused behavioral training.

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