Good Leadership is the Key

I read this post and it made me nod my head, YES - YES - YES!!!!

I have a vision in my head that to me is the ideal. This does not pertain only to the CEO but all upper management, for instance at my current hospital I wouldn't even know the Chief Nursing Officer - think I may have seen her from a distance once, maybe.

Every morning come in through the ER doors, spend time greeting the doctors and staff. Then start a walking rounds, look in on every patient on every floor. Depending on the size of your facility, you may need to split up the floors among the CEO, CNO, COO etc. Also during the day each department manager should round on and spend time with each patient and their family. This is a simple thing to do and makes a huge impact on the patient, makes them think we actually care about them, not just their wallet.

Pretend like you actually care about your employees. I'm sorry that you are too dense to realize that skilled employees are your finest resource but believe me, deep down most patients can tell the difference between a good nurse, Xray tech, patient care tech etc. and a bad one. They won't want to return to a place where they never saw their nurse or the Xray tech was surly or they rang their call bell for hours without anyone answering it. How to show you care? Get to know them by name, send them a birthday card, give them something at Christmas. If they are busy or short staffed get off your ASSES and get out there and help them. This especially should pertain to department managers, back in the day when I was a baby nurse they were called Head Nurses and if there were staffing problems they were expected to come in and work. Yes work the floors, night, weekends or what ever.

Another way to show you care is to make sure there is enough staff. My hospital went through a lay-off recently and you know who they laid off? The techs. The people who make $14 an hour. Yep, that will save us. We still have administrators, administrative assistants, secretaries to the assistants, directors, assistant directors, secretaries to the directors and enough clip-board nurses to have one for every two patients almost. BULLSHIT! Let's eliminate two or three of the people that make over $100K a year and keep the people who help take care of the patients, which - in case you have forgotten - is WHY THE HOSPITAL IS HERE YOU BLOOMING IDIOTS.

Do not sneak into work through the door down in the administrative wing and never come out of your office. Do not wear 4" spike heels to work, come prepared to throw on a lab coat and get your hands dirty.

Don't preach customer service to me unless you are practicing it yourself.

And yes, shovel snow if you have to.