Elevating Patient Care: A Conversation with Jill Anderson, VP of Patient Experience at RWJ Barnabas

<p>[Music] joining me here today uh my name is s sidiki from the American Journal of Hell care strategy and I will be your host today I am joined here with Jill Anderson Jill how are you doing today oh I'm doing great thank you so much for asking excited to be here with you Jill can you briefly introduce yourself to the audience and describe your job role sure so welcome everybody my name is Jill Anderson I am currently the system vice president of patient experience across the RWJ Barnabas health system for those who may not have heard of the health system we are the largest academic Health Care setting in the state of New Jersey so we have 12 acute care hospitals over 300 medical groups uh children specialized hospitals we have uh quite a few rehabs joint ventures um you name it we probably have it somewhere within our system and we have a very very strong partnership with with Ruckers University um I'm actually also a part-time lecturer at Ruckers so I teach mha students master of healthcare administration students and I actually just started my fifth year of doing that I've always loved school so I love being in the classroom with my students I teach them lean Six Sigma by the end of the 14 week course they end up with their green belt so I have uh over 15 years of data analytics and process Improvement experience I have my MBA I am aen Six Sigma Master black belt I always joke and say it doesn't know mean I know karate it's just the hierarchy of of understanding process Improvement and the strategy behind it I also have my project management professional and um have have aspirations to shortly work on my doctorate as well my my undergraduate degree is from Ur sinus College um and so that's where I studied international business and management and right after college I served for three years as a peace score volunteer on the small South Pacific island of Samoa so if you ever need a Samoan interpreter I uh am fluent in Samoan um I've won many different Awards throughout my career I started my career with educational testing service they uh shipped me out to India to Qatar to assist with setting up their scoring um of of their standardized test there um and during my free time I have a 15-year-old son who plays football so very involved with him I have a big Italian family very involved with my family I have dogs and I am a Collegiate athlete I was um I played softball at our sinus and I still actually do uh play softball as well at at my age of 46 so it's important to have a a good Outlet so you know that's a little bit about me yeah no that's fantastic you can really do it all um I wanted to ask how how do you manage to spend time from teaching from your uh vice presidency job from your family from playing softball how do you find time to manage everything that's a great question I I get that I get asked that quite a bit and my response is I don't I don't when you really have a passion for what you do and what you love I don't see it as as a job it actually energizes me um so it's really hard because I teach at night and so my class is usually done 8:30 900 p.m.</p> <p>and I have a 45 minute drive back from New Brunswick I live in Bucks County Pennsylvania and and then I am wired for a few hours just because it it just gives me such a natural high um I feel that way most days I work too um as you all know who work in healthcare it it's can be very addicting um you get the the natural highs and the dopamine running um when you're involved in so much and and truly find pleasure in serving others what values you expect yourself and your team to uphold when ensuring the best patient experience within your organization yeah so I'll first talk about my personal values I have have had wonderful ex cutive coaches who have really worked hard with me um and one of the very first activities I had with one of my first coaches hi Diane pulos if you're out there listening um was we sat down and we worked on my purpose statement as well as my personal values so my personal values um I narrow it down the five my faith um my my the striving for excellence I'm extremely analytical um probably my top my top value is Justice or fairness um and it's funny having a 15-year-old son that's also his so I don't know how much of this is inherited nurture versus nature and then my fifth value is really U my altruistic nature so it's it's interesting because a at across RWJ Barnabas Health just within the last month pardon me we just released new values that we have as a system so our new values at the system level and at each of our sites is accountability compassion curiosity empathy Excellence kindness respect and teamwork so very similar to my own and you know ensuring that we provide exceptional outcomes not only to our patients not only to their Companions and to each other as team members these values really hold strong throughout our organization and really Empower us to to be able to do what's best and what's right for for our patients their Companions and for our uh team members as well I really love how you began with talking about your own personal values uh by than the organizations as a whole um I think it's very important to not only focus on these values within a healthc care system but also carry it with you when you're not working in the hospital so I think that's really fantastic if I can just add one more comment my advice is I wish I had my values established before I think we did them maybe five six years ago so if you don't know your values ber Brown has something online a list of like values um and just go through it an exercise in terms of what resonates the most with you take that list socialize it with family members you know uh fellow co-workers whoever is in your life your friends maybe not your friends depends on your friends um and just see you know and and it for me it makes me a stronger leader um because I know when something disturbs me I go back to my values list and be like oh yeah I'm out of alignment in usually it's Justice um in Justice it's not fair that that person you know got ahead of me in traffic so just really important to make sure um leaders in healthc care you know that's a huge strategy to make sure you you have that self-awareness to be the best leader you can be yeah know that's very inspiring um this definitely why we need people like uh uh sort of directing these um these values and really putting these values into play Within the organization and in life in general um that's very very very inspiring um can you describe a situation where you successfully led a team through a significant change in patient care processes sure before I answer that because it'll dovetail nicely into uh the technology piece that I will be talking about I have about eight different buck buckets of responsibility as the system vice president one of the buckets is I oversee and Lead co-lead um I have a nurse leader a doctor leader and then I'm the patient experience leader of our HC caps task force um that is championed by our system CNO and our system CMO cqo I also have responsibility over our press gaining contract presy is the company we partner with to ensure that we are soliciting the voice of our patient feedback via surveys the third bucket that I'm responsible for something near and dear to my heart my grandfather was uh first gener first generation here from Italy didn't speak a lick of English when he came um so I have oversight to language Services of which I'm proud to announce that just last year alone we serviced our limit limited English proficient patients with over 9 million minutes of interpretation um minutes um the the fourth bucket that my team is responsible for at the site um I I kind of coined the patient Bill of Rights buckets so this is where if a patient uh when we fail our patients you know we want to afford them the opportunity we have to by law and it's the right thing to do but providing them the platform to call us you know to email us whatever um mechanism they use to you know explain hey this is where you failed me right so we capture complaints and Grievances and compliments too we actually have way more positive comments than the negative comments the fifth bucket I'll say for last that's the technology the six bucket to is huge impatient experience it's really where our high reliability um organizational journey is taking place this is where the culture lives this is where our zero emotional harm lives our culture of compassion is here as well and then um I also oversee gosh I think think in the 10 years I've been with RWJ Barnabas Health probably over 200 different interns um mainly from Ruckers but I've seen interns from Ryder University of Scranton John's Hopkins all over um so it's it just gives me such pleasure to you know groom and build the next generation of healthcare leaders the eighth bucket is building and coaching my patient experience leaders so let me go back to the technology so I'm going to describe the situation where I had to to lead a significant change in patient um care care processes it took me about 3 years but finally I received approval to purchase um hon has an amazing rounding tool so prior to us purchasing the rounding tool um everything was done paper when we would go in a patients's room you know we had our census list with us we'd be like okay are you Maria Rivera okay tell me about your experience are the nurses being nice are the doctors being nice are we telling you what to you know what you need to do upon discharge you know of course um every single hospital had a different list of questions that they were asking so massive variation across the system so this was like my first initiative um stepping into the system corporate role back in 20 the end of 2019 um so bringing this rounding tool which now as a system and Robert Wood Johnson merged with Barnabas um let's see six years ago right six seven years ago I believe um and so we're still really new as a system so I mean prior to two years ago every single hospital was using a different survey on the impatient side the emergency department Ambulatory Surgery all the different of units and service lines that that we survey so you know slowly but surely we're we're chipping away at at standardizing so with the rounding tool as of last February I cannot believe it'll be a year we um now have quite a few different templates that are used at the system level meaning everybody every nurse leader who goes out and rounds on patient and their goal every day is to you know round on at least 50% of the patients so we have a nurse leader rounding template and now across the system everybody asks the same questions which gives us a bullet load of data it's amazing I mean it's the right thing to do of course for our patients and our nurse leaders and the dating data piece is is incredible to glean you know what are we doing wrong what are we doing right and the recognition piece is just so powerful a lot of what we do is looking at changing behaviors and it's like kids you know like we want to reward those behaviors that are positive so that they continuously you know perform that those um behaviors the second template plate that we implemented was the patient experience rounding template so we wanted to make sure the patient experience template was different than the nurse leader template so the patient experience template is really a conglomerate of different questions mainly about our providers our doctors um and then also uh we have some food and nutrition questions in there because we know that's so important for our patients well-being the third template that we recently implemented this is still being imp imped across the system is our senior leader rounding template so senior leaders across half of our sites so far not only do they go and round on patients and they go and round on our team members we know that there's such a direct connection and correlation there's a lot of evidence-based research that shows the employee experience goes hand inhand with patient experience we cannot have a strong Foundation of patient experience without a very very strong and resilient Workforce and then the fifth template that I wanted to talk about and I'll I'll discuss in a bit is the provider coaching validation template we just went live with this as of um the end of last year so we're not even a month into utilizing that template it's really interesting to see that as the p as the uh your staff's satisfaction goes up so du to patients um I think that's really cool how everything sort of intertwines in a way and the data that you mentioned it's definitely a great resource um I know there's a huge focus in the healthcare industry on data and monitoring the data and the changes uh nothing is perfect so it's really great to uh sort of have some uh solid data numerical data to show how things really improve over time so no I think this is really really cool uh I know you mentioned press gainy a little bit ago um are there any other sort of uh metrics that you use to measure and track patient satisfaction um how your staff's doing things like that yes so through the HC caps task force that I mentioned earlier we for the first time last year 2023 every single hospital had the same three goals at their site level and they had to take a system level goal um goals so the three goals that we look at and patient experience is one of our top initiatives across our system so we look at three um domains one is uh communication with nursing domain the second one is communication with Dr domain and then we look at the question um how well would you rate the hospital on a scale of um Z to 10 that's great um definitely provides uh some of that data we just talked about um you can really see how things change over time kpis are definitely very important to improving absolutely you you really can't have like a a strong strong metrics without a really really strong Vision so kudos to our chief medical and quality officer Dr Andy Anderson you know when he first stepped into his role I think it'll be two years already in May you know he really came in with a strong vision of providing exceptional outcomes to our patients to our Companions and to our team members so having that strong leadership that has a strong Vision that everybody can remember um and then again making sure everybody has the tools that they need to be successful is also Paramount to launching a successful strategy how do you manage to uh the whole Healthcare System is changing over time especially with the introduction of Technology you mentioned being paper before and now things are really switching up uh how do you manage to really quickly learn these techn different types of Technologies and sort of utilize them in a way that really benefits your practice you know attending different conferences making connections with different vendors learning from other Health Care Systems what they're using um is is you know one Avenue to keep me personally informed I read a lot too to see what's out there what's the next greatest thing because I love you know like I said earlier when when you're in a a role that you you know is in alignment with your values and your purpose it doesn't feel like work um so I love creating new things I love bringing new things um new Solutions into play um it's really important as leaders that we provide you know not only the policies the procedures and the technology to our team members right so we want to make sure that we equip Empower and enable them those are the key ingredients to successful launches of of any kind of Technology um across our system we're on a five-year epic implementation and so we're at our fifth year this year I can't I can't believe it and so we have two our Children's Specialized Hospital and Trinitas uh Medical Center and Elizabeth are our two last sites to go live so you know just again making sure we provide the appropriate technology to our team because it is about making sure you know that efficiency is there and that data is there that we can leverage and learn from at the end of the day uh what really matters in a healthcare system is the patient experience and as a vice president of patient experience what are some of the complaints that you see from patients themselves and how do you ensure that none of these complaints are repeated in the future I wish I could say that they're never repeated again I you know that's a challenging piece in healthcare making sure that we have hard stops in in there that you know we we have that culture of always we have to be perfect you know if it's your brother's Uncle sister dog Uncle you know you really want to ensure that we are perfect we have to be and in a high reliability having zero defects zero emotional harm zero physical harm you know that that pursuit of of of of perfection is is always in the back of our minds so we we fail our patients um pretty regular because of of many different reasons our top concern that we hear from patients is regarding billing right so sometimes it's a billing concern related to revenue cycle like I don't understand why my um Insurance didn't pay for this or why did I receive three bills sometimes it's a billing issue where my team patient experience has to be involved because it's say a 16-year-old comes in a girl comes in 16-year-old woman uh with her mom and she's having stomach pains they receive the bill the mom calls us and says I don't understand why I have to pay for a pregnancy test she's not pregnant you know so sometimes those concerns come out of care and treatment so then we have to investigate them so billing is our top complaint the process that we have recently you know designed and developed is we meet regularly with our billing team patient access team Financial Services we go over the reports and then we talk about the numbers and we talk about what else do we need to do you know to chip away at you know the the thousands of complaints we see in this Avenue I'm confident with our newly launched epic that that technology will help to mitigate some of these concerns also sometimes we just have people that are like my bill is $10,000 I can't pay that I'm not paying it you know and we have to you know we we seriously take every single complaint as if it is our mother brother sister Uncle dog's lives in our hands so you know again we're not perfect our our striving to be you know a zero defect zero harm uh facility under our high reliability umbrella is always going to keep us busy working on the massive you know opportunities that we have you know have it be the complaints and or the frictional operational wos that that we all face in healthcare unfortunately do you feel these issues with billing our science of a poorly constructed Health Care system to begin with uh in America or do you feel as if this can be narrowed down to Case by case it I think a little bit of both um you know sometimes we do Rectify them sometimes we are at fault um yeah I think there's there's bigger issues definitely ways to simplify the billing process yeah you know just reducing the number of bills and also making sure that we appropriately explain it and keep our patients engaged so that they understand the process they understand you know the the breakdown of their bills so I you know I think some of it is systemic um and some of it you know there's some lwh hanging fruit here for sure there are definitely uh limited resources and like you said uh not not everyone is perfect and not every Healthcare System is perfect uh everyone strives to be but sometimes it's just difficult to be and with that these can be due to resources or different policies and needs amending uh how do you handle these challenging situations from uh patient Case by case uh where the patient expectations don't necessarily align with the resources or policies of that Healthcare facility yeah that's a great question we're actually seeing more and more of of this uh for example the the the the story that comes to mind is recently uh we had a situation in one of our hospital where Contraband was was brought in and so you know I think somebody ordered Chinese food and had their family member deliver it and we found drugs in it right so in that case not in alignment with our policy right and so you know we had to involve the police so there are definitely we love our policies and procedures and guidelines in healthc care um so we have you name it I'm sure we have either a policy procedure Andor um you know guidelines that that we know we we uh need to adhere to when this situation occurs that's great uh how do you ensure effective communication between your health care providers uh whether that's nurses Physicians uh front desk staff uh how do you ensure the effective communication between your general staff and to enhance the overall patient satisfaction yeah that's where like making sure we have really strong tactics and strategy surrounding communication you know it it is so important um to make sure we are communicating and you know in the the the first three questions on the the impatient survey is about you know how often are nurses and doctors you know um speaking to you in a courteous and respectful manner I'm ad living I don't have the exact you know questioning in there so courtesy and respect how often are we listening and then how often are we explaining right so all of that all three of those components respect listening and explaining ensure that we are having that effective communication and that's why those three questions are on the survey first second and third um so we I I'll pick on our doctors um I shouldn't say pick on but I will the example I'm about to give is regarding our providers so for many many years we've always had a very strong nursing prescriptive plan and in that prescriptive plan displayed our strategy making sure that at change of shift so 7 a.m.</p> <p>7 P.M we have the bedside shift report where the nurses go in sit next to the patient and they have a conversation the nurses with the patient and family members that may or may not be there and and go through that patient SC care as the handoff occurs the second component of our nursing prescriptive plan our nurse leader rounds which I already discussed we now have documentation of those nurse leader rounds uh V our our rounding tool and so you know amongst other things in the prescriptive plan and then as I was studying data a few years ago I noticed in our key driver report that you know press ging provides to us doctors were showing up and you know I was somewhat new to the system Rule and I was like well what are we doing for our doctors and people were like we can't touch our providers some most of them are private like we can't do that and I'm like why not you know so you know going against the status quo you know as a leader that's our role question everything you know have that questioning attitude is really important and so I'm really proud with the work that we're doing under the HC caps task force we have Dr Mark Milano who is leading that doctor prescriptive plan so for the first time not only do we have a doctor prescriptive plan and just in October it seems so long ago we for the first time at the system level invested in our doctors and we had 39 doctors I'm getting the chills talking about it we had 39 doctors that went through this coaching program we partnered with Heron Consulting uh group wonderful partnership and collectively we work together I Incorporated uh CMO feedback you know I have a strong background in in education so um and then some other folks you know and we came up with C six key Concepts and behaviors so for example the first behavior is framing the encounter right and then we have very prescribed tasks that need to occur so when a doctor walks into the room making sure they're knocking and asking for permission before they go in the room if language Services is needed that they're adhering to any of the cultural needs of our patients New Jersey is extremely diverse one in three residents in New Jersey actually speak another language at home so that's why that's on the list and then you know just making sure that the doctors are you know acknowledging that they reviewed the record that they're summarizing it in you know terms that our patients can understand they're not using using acronyms and then asking questions like what's most important for you today so that's our first key behavior that our doctors went through with this coaching program the second one I'll highlight and then I'll stop there because there's six of them is empathy and compassion so I love this because you know our when we when the coaches now the coaches pair up with another provider the coach goes in and observes the doctor and that's where we use our rounding tools so we have the provider coaching validation tool so all of the six behaviors and the tasks that we're looking for on there and at the end of that that interaction with the patient the provider comes out of the room with the doctor and they have that immediate feedback session what what worked really well while you were in there what opportunities do you see well I I noticed this is the best way I can explain the empathy and compassion piece so one of our hospitalists was observing another hospitalist and the patient was visibly anxious wanted to go home like most patients do wanted to get back to their quality of life in this case the patient was a secur is a security guard and he said listen doc I'm gonna go and sit at my desk I'm not going to move I'm safe I'm not going to be running around can you please um sign my work paper I guess he needed something signed for work to give him permission to go back he said you know I am the sole bread winner of my family and if I don't work my family won't eat so of course the doctor said absolutely I will sign the form sign the formed you know and then left the room so part of the debrief was do you feel that there was an opportunity for an empathetic statement in that case and the doctor was like I was empathetic I signed the form and you know the coach was like well there's a difference between empathy and compassion compassion is the doing piece yes you did you you you signed your name that's the compassion piece but maybe that empathetic statement goes a long way like something like wow I can really hear that this is important to you and you know it's amazing that you're such a provider for your family simple sentence like that makes a huge difference um because what's most important to our patients when they're in the hospital it's not their bill well maybe for some patients but it's the way we treat them how do we make them feel why are they while they are in our care are we spending the most appropriate time are we being courteous and respectful are we explaining the level of care what we're doing when we're in the room are we listening to them so those are all really really you know key components to make making sure that we are providing those exceptional outcomes yeah I find it interesting how a lot of providers go go through years of experience and during that time they're more trained in The Compassion part the doing part where if say a patient needs surgery they're trained on how to perform the surgery uh if someone needs a medication they're trained on how to diagnose and prescribe this medication but there isn't really that much training involved with the empathy part what do you say how do you conduct your bedside manner when uh treating someone that is clearly going through an illness lot of issues uh like you said they're away from their normal way of life so they definitely want to get out of the hospital you know nobody wants to spend all day at the hospital how do you make these people how you make these patients feel better and really get them uh feeling better in the mental state and I have to tell you since I went through the training I've I've used this on my own family and friends like what I I feel like a broken record but nobody has called me out on it you know recently was talking to a friend and I was like oh this is a good time for me to be empathetic right because I'm extremely analytical so this whole feelings treating respect side is like really somewhat new to me being in the analytics for so long so I'm learning this alongside the doctors and you know what they coached us was on was like sometimes it just just say something like that sounds blank so my friend was is going through something and I was like wow that sounds really frustrating and that that's it right and and just give them the open space again and that that's providing that psychologically safe environment for her to say you know what it is so it those empathetic statements go a long way and think about how you feel when if somebody were to say that to you it's like wow it's affirmation you're listening oh yeah and you have a big heart and you do care so yeah let's be you know let's utilize our Humanity in this together but it it definitely can be taught because I've learned a lot from going through the course as well yeah I feel like when a lot of people are ranting about different issues whether it's small whether it's big most of the time they want to feel understood you know they want someone to be able to relate to them and really understand what they're going through so a small sentence such as uh that sounds really frustrating that can go a really long way and like you said affirming the other individual um I think that's great do you feel like providers should be uh going through this class that you went through yeah so we had we had 39 doctors that just went through in October and I have to tell you um this was you know um spearheaded by by a group of us um and just like with the rounding tool so the rounding tool was implemented in February this in October and I was just like oh no is this going to be the straw that breaks my back am I finally going to get fired what if what if nobody likes the program what if what if this is a failure you know I have to tell you we had seven sessions that occurred over the course of two days and at the end everybody was like it was too short we want more so while we started this year with 39 doctors across our system we wanted to make sure we had at least two doctors for three doctors for each of the sites so it was typically the CMO that attended the lead hospitalist and then another you know what are they called a high potential Doctor Who is enthusiastic about patient experiences well that attended I'm happy to say we're about to sign another contract with the Heron Consulting Group to continue the work for 2024 so you know we're just now working on what's our fiveyear St strategic plan as it pertains to this provider coaching program and I have to share with you that I had a mentor once he was incredible and he always said even if you're 50% ready to implement something new do it it's not going to be perfect we sometimes in healthcare we ourselves and handcuff ourselves it has to be perfect has we don't have a strategic plan what are we going to do you know it's like no we have a good solid concept right we know that there's a gap we know this is needed our patients are telling us in their comments we observed you know doctors we hear it we feel it we see it and so you know being 50% ready you know launched it we're still we're there's still some growing pain um however you know you still have to have to move forward regardless of those those challenges I really love that advice from your Mentor there's definitely uh you'll find different gaps around and whatever you have whatever you have in your mind for a solution it might not fill the entire Gap but it will definitely fill it much more than what it was if nothing was placed you know so I agree whatever you have put it into motion and from putting into motion you sort of learn the weaknesses of this plan and you can alter it as you go and create something that really fills that Gap in as a whole before we go here today uh I wanted to ask you if there's anything you wanted patients as a whole to sort of understand from the perspective of a hospital worker is there anything you wish patients would understand whether it's a lot of how overworked Hospital industry is uh how how quickly you guys have to move uh from place to place um is there anything you would sort of want the community to understand when they come in for a hospital visit I love that question that's such a powerful question so across our system most of our sites have something called a patient and family advisory Council so preco I sat down with um one of our patient and family advisory council members at our Hospital in Hamilton New Jersey and I asked him you know coming from the lean Six Sigma World being very analytical my process Maps were always like wake up brush your teeth you know pack your lunch get to work there was no emotional component to it and then my very first patient experience um conference was at the Cleveland Clinic and I forget who it was this Hospital talked about ethnographic data I was like what the hell is that so it took the process map and added a layer of emotions so this part I'll never forget because it was so powerful the example was when children are sick the first thing you know so they mapped out the process what happens when you know little Isaac as a baby gets sick right and they mapped it out and then this Health Care System went to the family's houses and talked to them and they said okay Mrs Anderson when you knew Isaac was sick what was the very first thing you do and you know what it predominantly was and I was like oh yeah I do that too as a mom most of the time the mom of the child calls their own mom so when my son Isaac is sick even now that he's 15 I call my mom Mom I don't know what to do like he has a fever you know help me out you know and so knowing that information and how that that that mother and that father felt in that time and the actions that they took helped this Healthcare System to design and create the appropriate tactics you know to make sure it was a less s suffering position for them we know the word patient has Latin roots that mean suffering it's our job as healthcare workers to reduce that that level of of suffering so I did this patient Journey map with our patient and family advisory council member let's call him John and so John fell off the ladder so it was from the time he fell off the ladder to the time he was discharged so said John how did you feel when this is the first time I'm talking about feelings in my process map so it was super uncomfortable for me but I knew John really well so he was a good player with me you know he's like I felt like I was in a lot of pain and then he said you know my wife wasn't around I knew I was gonna have to drive myself I'm like what else was going through your mind you know and he's like how am I going to pay for this you know like I just retired like how much is this bill going to be okay when you arrived at the hospital what's going through your mind no lie I'll never forget this either we we had different emojis pictures cut out on my desk with the appropriate feeling and we literally like pasted and glued in each of the process that from you know the initial physical ailment to arrival at the hospital registration getting you know getting um into the emergency department Bay and then getting discharged it was so powerful you know just to to to learn that emotional Journey too and it was in that moment I was like damn you know what John you inspired me we always talk about patient Journey Maps I want to talk to one of the Ed doctors I want to go through the same process from arrival to discharge of what emergency doctor emotionally goes through and so I did that I had a a great connection in the emergency department and so this doctor sat down with me and and went through the emotions and then I'm talking to him and I was like you know what Dr Dr Rivera I really want to do this now with a nurse leader so I did that I did it with a nurse leader and it was so amazing I took the patient Journey map with the emotions the doctor Journey map with his emotions and the nursing Journey map with with their emotions and so my wish would be that not only do our patients understand what the hell is going on in the doctor's mind and the nurse's mind but the doctor understands what's going on in the patient's mind the nurse's mind I mean I could have did this for I would still probably be doing this because you could do it for all the different people on an average three-day impatience day 100 different people come in and out of a patients room that's a lot of times we have to be perfect you know so to learn and to walk in somebody else's shoes and to truly understand what they're going through will help everybody out it really will it'll help you know probably mitigate some of the suffering that that we all go through in healthcare have it be the patients their companions you know um our staff so that would be that would be my wish right that goes back to what we were saying about empathy and compassion you know try to understand the other person and things it'll change a lot for the mental state of everyone uh I have a question what were some of the similarities you found from each of the journey maps from the nurse to the doctor to the patient oh gosh I I feel like there were more differences actually where like the the the patient was pretty much extremely emotional throughout the entire time right um the doctor you know when I tried to get emotions out of him it was like talking to myself like he was like I don't I don't there's no emotions like I just know I have to get my job done this patient is here in front of me sometimes they're bleeding out sometimes they're you know gunshot wounds whatever the situation is sometimes it's it's very dire this person could die if I don't immed do you want me to be nice to them and their family do you want me to heal them right then in that that moment you know so I I think if patients understood that perspective from the doctor and I know this doctor his his he is so compassionate he's very empathetic too and so you know at the end he's like when I'm done healing that person that patient then I go talk to the family you know and and bring them up to speed and you know provide that kind compassionate empathetic response that that may or may not be needed so so that was interesting perspective where that emotional piece came towards the end and then the nursing the nursing too was emotional um the nurses you know obviously interact with our patients um pretty much most out of all the staff so you know just listening to from their perspective you know checking in on the patient and getting frustrated when you know maybe the food is coming in late the food is cold or the doctor isn't responding or the test is delayed so they have to deal they're more frustrated at times with the operational inefficiencies and sometimes too the the lack of communication that that we've already talked about occurs quite often in healthcare wow that's truly fantastic just seeing the different mindsets of every person throughout the whole journey and the differences are involved it makes sense that the patient would be more emotional while the Doctor Who sort of facing a time barrier he has to get from place to place treat multiple people at once uh he doesn't really have time to provide emotional Comfort towards uh the family at the moment um he has to remain objective during that period and sort of it's great that he can come back and show the emotional side around the end and the nurses which he's mentioned are usually with the patient themselves uh they can they're they're more emotional towards them because they were able to create the sort of connection and they talk to the patient the families they they were associated more so that's that's very interesting stuff yeah s it's all about connection it really is so you know having connection to your team members you know during covid you know we really held on strongly to the connections we had with each other that got us through some of our our darkest days you know and then making sure that you know no matter what is is going on that we're also having that connection you know with our our fellow PA the the patients The Companions and and the rest of you know the team members up and down the the leadership Pipeline and out even outside of you know that department that you may or may not be working in and and I want to say I know I spoke a lot about um you know clinical examples I'm not clinical so you know I I used to work at Cancer Treatment Centers of America and what what we said there was either you serve the patient and their families directly or you serve those who serve the patient so you know a lot of examples of course we're clinical today there's just as many examples from housekeeping you know from from it from from many different you know um non-clinical departments too because it is it's such a team sport and you know earlier on I said I was a Collegiate athlete my competitiveness has prepared me well for healthc care my my time as a Peace Corp volunteer living in a developing country where I didn't have running water all day um I only had it a couple hours I only had electric a couple hours you know like that the resources prepared me well for for uh he a career in healthcare as as well as the amazing leaders and family members that I've had throughout my my my career I'm very grateful and blessed no that's very fantastic Jill you're definitely an inspiration to us all they definitely need to change your title from vice president of patient experience to people experience because it seems like you manage the staff you manage the patients you make sure every has a great experience overall whether they're uh fully working there full-time or they're only there for a hospital visit which is very very inspiring and I'm really glad I could talk to you Jill thank you so much for joining me here today um thank you to our Watchers uh we really appreciate the support yeah my pleasure thank you s I appreciate it best wishes you as well</p>