By Jennifer Serda Anchor
News 3 On Your Side
Heading to the hospital can be a scary time and Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital hopes to calm fears with a smile.News 3 On Your Side
Email to a Friend
Stumble It!A hospital's medical staff plays a large role in making patients feel safe and secure. Poor bedside manner can negatively impact patients and their families; and one local hospital hopes to change the way patients, doctors, and nurses interact.
Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital has begun a new program to reinforce customer service principles. The program began in February and now every employee must go through the program.
The program uses the acronym AIDET to enforce a basic principle, which stands for:
Acknowledge
Introduce yourself
Duration of procedure
Explain
Thank you
Director of the Hughston Orthopaedic Center Jeane Schomburg says the attention to customer service has made a big difference.
“To me it makes my job easier because I don’t have as many patient complaints or the patient complaints I do receive there easier to resolve.”
The Customer Service Program also includes other principles that make patients feel valued. Each employee, before leaving a room, is to ask to ask the final question “is there anything else I can do for you.”
This one question has patient Kathryn Teasley singing the hospital praises.
“Everybody that I have come in contact with from the people that clean the rooms to the people that bring the food, the staff, everybody has been wonderful!”
Other principles include making eye contact, give a verbal greeting, escort visitors, and remembering names.
Schomburg says it’s that attention that keeps her patients happy.
‘All people by there names, everyone likes to feel like there important and valued and by calling there names that's an indicator that you do value them.”
Schomburg adds when more situations arises, like having to deliver the news of a death or deadly illness, specially trained personal are the only employees who can speak with the families.
