Patient’s Perspective

In any type of business environment, the patient's perspective is vital to the survival of the organization.  This is specifically even more true in health care organizations.  Medical facilities generally have a strategic marketing plan.  However, word of mouth is usually just as effective in attracting high numbers of patients, if not more.  One family may share their account of the experience with another family, and that will either positively or negatively affect whether or not they choose to visit the health facility.  Failing to listen to a patient's account of an adverse incident, is basically ensuring that your organization receives negative feedback.

Different people can take offense to different situations.  If a patient complains about one of the attending health professionals, it is imperative to console the patient and correct any problems they are experiencing immediately, even if the medical professional did not intentionally inflict any kind of physical or emotional harm.  If something was interpreted wrong, and the proper actions were never taken to address the issue, then the medical facility becomes at risk for negative publicity, and even worse malpractice suits.  For example, imagine for a moment that an elderly woman is a patient in the hospital due to her extremely high blood pressure.  If a medical attendee makes a mistake while helping the older woman, and she decides to complain, then it is imperative for the hospital to acknowledge her claims, because if she is ignored, she will more than likely either sue as mentioned before, talk to a higher authority within the hospital, or ensure that none of her friends and family return to the establishment.  

Learning how to properly communicate with patients to effectively decipher whether an adverse event has actually occurred, is extremely important and should be included in employee training.  If a patient complains, they could have a completely valid argument or they could have taken something a medical employee did or said in the wrong way.  Whether or not either of these is the case, nothing a patient says should be taken lightly or ignored.  The employees must listen to the patient's allegations, and work towards calming them down if they are over-heated and upset.  The job of any health facility is to provide optimum medical services.  If the patient does not feel that they received that level of care, then they have every right to complain.  However, for minimal issues, sometimes a kind word will cause an overheated patient to relax and drop their argument or qualm.  Recognizing and dealing with these problems is the key to running a sucessful health facility.