“Patients Come Second,” Focus on Staff Engagement for Best Patient Experience and a Thriving Practice

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: In healthcare, patient experience has been examined for decades with the goal of providing excellent customer service as the means. Amidst the challenges of this era, increasing use of technology, demands for increasing productivity while delivering safe patient care, let's face it: employees (both clinical and non-clinical) get treated like second-class citizens. The result is often depersonalization, poor communication, and compassion fatigue. In this session, we will examine the relationship between employee engagement and optimal patient experience through the lens of a book entitled "Patients Come Second," by Paul Spiegelman and Britt Berrett, which forever changed the way the presenters lead their teams and practices in both hospital and office settings. What we have found is that the highest rated providers and most successful practices are led by those who focus first on a staff culture of engagement, psychological safety, and genuine concern for the well-being of the people who make up the organization at all levels. With such conditions, accountability and reliability of the staff increase, customer satisfaction and loyalty peak, and measures of success will follow the same trajectory.

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 1: 1) Identify challenges that pertain to hospital and outpatient specialty care in Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. How do these challenges contribute to staff burnout and attrition? How do these challenges contribute to poor patient experience?

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 2: 2) Discuss ways to improve employee engagement, psychological safety, office culture and staff satisfaction. Include how to take care of various categories of staff, from administrative to clinical (medical assistants, nurses, APPs, applied health professionals and physicians)

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 3: 3) Make the connection between employee engagement and patient experience and challenge healthcare leaders to think differently about the focus of their data analytics, improvement efforts and their energy in general.

BACKGROUND STATEMENT: The speakers have decades of experience in both civilian and military settings, hospital and private practice. Special attention will be given to diversity, inclusion of APPs, and the need for physicians to be leaders of office culture, for best patient experience and a thriving practice.

Comprehensive Otolaryngology Track Statement : This topic applies to all healthcare organizations, and would be well received by comprehensive otolaryngology providers and subspecialists alike. Also applicable to nurses, audiologists, speech and language pathologists, advanced practice providers (APPs) and administrators.