[A guest blog from Wendy Perera, MBA, MSN, BSN, RN, PMGT-BC, NEA-BC, Alumnus CCRN
Chief Nurse Executive ~ PereraHealth. Part 3 of a 3 part series on healthcare communication]
As noted in our previous blogs; “Communication Tools in Healthcare, do they improve your work environment?” and “Transparency in Healthcare: Are we communicating or silencing?”, a search for articles on this topic has yielded few results in the past five years. While healthcare organizations rightfully focus on innovative tools and technology to enhance patient care, there is a noticeable gap in technology enabled communication tools for team member communication that fosters transparency to improve work environments and prevent safety concerns.
An article written in late 2019 with the stated goal to "establish trust in teams to improve engagement and enhance patient outcomes," neglected to focus on the team members themselves. Instead, it emphasized accountability around daily emails. The article did mention monthly leader rounding but emphasized bureaucratic tasks like logging rounds and logging sent thank-you notes, rather than fostering genuine engagement. The suggestion that leaders should spend their time trapped in their office managing emails, meeting with one person at a time, and then documenting those interactions on logs seems challenging for leaders with a lot of team members, and would perhaps limit the amount of time they will have to actually be with their teams in their work environments.
Could the lack of technology facilitated communication tools for healthcare team members be contributing to a decline in trust and an increased tendency for front line team members to vent frustrations on unproductive social media platforms?
Does Healthcare Have a Trust Problem?
In 2024 we are learning more about what needs improving in healthcare organizations through TikTok and other social media platforms, than from within healthcare organizations. These postings are even giving some potential healthcare team members pause as they are rethinking a career in health care.
We saw this in 2020 during COVID where several healthcare organizations made headline news for all the wrong reasons. Healthcare team members trusted the court of public opinion more than their own leaders. Unfortunately, healthcare team member communication tools did not improve in the months that followed COVID. If anything, it’s only gotten worse. Monthly meetings, even though insufficient communication before the pandemic have all but disappeared in some departments.
At the March 2024 AORN leadership summit a presenter from Good Company Consulting shared a Harvard Business Review statistic indicating “58% of people trust strangers more than their own boss.” It’s no wonder we saw pictures plastered all over the news about critical supply shortages during the pandemic, and now see videos surfacing on social media. We do not recommend this as a way to learn about workplace improvement needs.
In March 2024 Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) reported that “Only 33% of clinicians who have worked less than a year in their workplace have voluntarily reported one or more safety events. While 50% of those with 6- to 10-years of experience made such reports. These challenges reflect deficits at the system level and are not on the part of individual clinicians.”
Healthcare team members tell us they fear retaliation from peers, other professionals such as physicians or pharmacists, or leaders when they submit issues.
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.
Conclusion
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. Organizations 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. These tools should be anonymous, and encourage transparency. This blog highlights the need for resources to also be free of bias and be available at the moment of observation, without the need to schedule an appointment, arrive early, stay late, or wait for a scheduled meeting that may or may not happen.
Yell'o™ is a new way for front line healthcare team members to anonymously post workplace issues and suggest solutions using a mobile phone... right at the moment they observe them...not a month later at some scheduled meeting.
• Be it broken equipment, Pyxis issues, supply concerns, run-of-the-mill compliance matters, or workplace suggestions
• Be it in a surgical suite, a restroom, ICU, ED, the Cath Lab, SPD, back hallway near the loading dock, or wherever
• Be it 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday or 2:00am on a Saturday, even if it's New Year's Day
And it’s as simple as, but more advanced than, well, sticky notes… and way better than emails!
👉 Did we mention the issues and solutions are transported directly to the department that can fix them and NOT your over-burdened manager!?
Yell'o™ works to make healthier, safer, and happier workplaces.
If it improves the lives of those caring for your patients, it improves your patient care.
Additional Resources
References:
Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI)
2024 AORN Leadership Summit ~ Good Company Consulting
Harvard Business Review (HBR)
Author: Wendy Perera, MBA, MSN, BSN, RN, PMGT-BC, NEA-BC, Alumnus CCRN
Chief Nurse Executive ~ PereraHealth
Co-founder & CEO Yell'o™
Contact Info: Wendy@pererahealth.com
Yello @ http://linkedin.com/in/phyello
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