Michael

Empirical evidence strongly suggests communication tools for healthcare team members are lacking. Since healthcare organizations are responsible for providing resources for their team members to effectively do their jobs. They need to provide tools that foster open communication to let team members share their observations and experiences in a constructive manner that helps solve the issue by identifying solutions.

Transparency is “the quality of being done in an open way without secrets.” In the context of healthcare and HROs, we can say, for example, we need healthcare team members to be more transparent with their leaders about their day-to-day observations and experiences so we can improve upon processes and prevent safety concerns for co-workers and patients.

Given that health care delivery is 24/7, many team members work evenings, nights, weekends and holidays, when leaders are often not present. Do we see more sticky notes or emails from team members to communicate about their workplace needs when their leader is not available? Could this account for the higher number of emails received by healthcare leaders with larger departments? The higher number of emails received may translate to a higher number of unread emails. Our most recent social media poll shown in this blog’s cover image reflects the limited number of times team members feel they were asked “what needs improving in the workplace?”, 48% stating they had no opportunity at all.