≥ 92% of participants will know the importance of customer service in healthcare and how to improve patient-centered empathy through the principles of holistic healthcare.
CEUFast, Inc. is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation. ANCC Provider number #P0274.
CEUFast, Inc. is an AOTA Provider of professional development, Course approval ID#00000. This distant learning-independent format is offered at 0.1 CEUs Intermediate, Categories: Professional Issues. AOTA does not endorse specific course content, products, or clinical procedures. AOTA provider number 9757.
≥ 92% of participants will know the importance of customer service in healthcare and how to improve patient-centered empathy through the principles of holistic healthcare.
Following the completion of this course, the participant will be able to:
Customer service in healthcare is sometimes overlooked amidst the hustle and bustle of the waiting and treatment areas in our medical facilities. We are all conscious that a smile and an “I’m sorry” or a” Thank you for choosing our facility” can soothe many difficult situations. Ideally, you may (but not always) be able to relieve the patient proactively. Most people coming to your facility are tired, sick, or hurt, and that’s just the part you can see. They may also be recently bereaved, homeless, frightened, or recently fired from their job. We cannot know what may be going on in their day.
Empathy: The ability to sense intellectually and emotionally the emotions, feelings, and reactions that another person is experiencing and effectively communicate that understanding to the person (Farlex, 2012a).
Holistic Medicine: An approach to medical care that emphasizes the study of all aspects of a person’s health, especially that a person should be considered as a unit, including psychological and economic influences on health status (Farlex. 2012b).
Customer service: The assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services (Oxford Languages online dictionary, n.d.).
We can do our jobs as well as possible. If the patient feels disrespected by our body language (including facial expressions), tone of voice, or speed and tenor of speech, they will ultimately decide how to complain. Will they resort to social media or be happy to share their perception with a department supervisor, their neighbor, and family? How we look is also judged instantaneously.
How long did it take you to form an opinion? Our patients will also judge us the same way. People say you can tell when a medical person has a “calling.” How do they know? Because there is a caring attitude, no matter the circumstance. You know when that care provider isn’t just in the profession for the money.
Although none of us can afford to help people get and stay on the wellness continuum without being paid, most of us are not in it just for the paycheck.
Maria is a 32-year-old female coming in to get a referral from her doctor for a urologist. When she made the appointment, she mentioned her level of discomfort and that she was coming in for a referral for bladder pain. On arriving at the primary care office, the person behind the window slid the door open, passed out a signup sheet and a pen, and then closed the window. She never spoke to Maria. The signup sheet asked when her appointment was, who she would be seeing, and her arrival time. She filled it in and knocked on the window to let the receptionist know she was finished. The receptionist took the book and, in a voice without expression, asked if her insurance had changed. Maria said," No". The receptionist closed the window without further ado. Maria turned from the window and looked at the waiting area, seeing a relatively neat room with many empty chairs. She sat down, thinking to herself, "No wonder there are so many empty chairs; I hope the doctor and nurses are nicer than she was." We laugh, but this is common, and our next moves will make the difference when she decides whether or not to see our primary provider again. Suppose that door opens and a stone-faced nurse or aid calls her name in a droning voice and mechanically goes through the weighing and rooming. In that case, they have lost an opportunity to shore up Maria's emotions about this facility and all the staff. If the doctor is running late and Maria is left in the little exam room long enough without explaining why her appointment was at 2:00 PM, and it's 2:45, she will add to her inner dialogue.
Points to consider:
Perhaps an authentic apology for her continuing wait time, a short HIPPA-friendly report of the delay, and your honest estimate of when the provider can come in. Then, inform the provider how long Maria has been in the room before their arrival.
We now have an increased older patient population that requires special care. In many hospitals, primary care and urgent care facilities, electronic patient check-ins, new patient assessments, and even surveys to assess patient satisfaction are handled through a computer connection (Leonardsen et al., 2020).
Mrs. Stefanovich is helping her husband, who doesn't speak English fluently, at the doctor's office. Her husband is 80 years old and is coming to visit his new heart doctor. The young lady at the reception desk hands her a computer tablet and asks her to complete the information. Mrs. Stefanovich has never seen a computer tablet and looks at it blankly. The young lady taps the tablet, and it lights up. She comes out from behind the desk and offers to sit with the couple and help them navigate the check-in procedure. She gives lots of encouragement, allowing the patient's wife to hold and operate the tablet as much as possible. She explains that this is a time saver because all the information goes into the computer, saving a lot of time and effort in writing down the answers. The 80-year-old couple finished checking in after the receptionist returned to her desk. Deshpande et al. report, "Interventions tailored for patients with low electronic health literacy eHL could ensure greater equity in healthcare delivery…(2023)".
Points to consider:
Approximately 68 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home; of those, 8.2% speak English less than very well (HHS, 2023). Effective communication is critical in healthcare and an essential component of customer satisfaction. In 2023, the US Department of Health and Human Services updated the Language Access Plan to help ensure improved services to people with limited English proficiency.
What do we need to know in healthcare to reduce the emotional discomfort of our patients, beginning with our customer service style? We express our customer service style through body language, facial expressions, appearance, and tone.
Facial expressions: How often have you been downright offended by someone rolling their eyes at you? Or someone whose eyes aren’t smiling along with their mouth?
Voice characteristics: If someone is saying, “Hi, welcome to our hospital,” but isn’t making good eye contact or speaks very quickly, mumbling a rote phrase with a distracted expression, what is your inner dialogue going to be?
Body Language: Do you feel warm regards if someone smiles and holds their hands out to you, cupping your hand between theirs when welcoming you?
Neatness: If the person coming in to bring your food tray has dirty fingernails and smells like week-old sauerkraut, how does your appetite go?
These are extreme examples; however, a vulnerable person seeking help from someone they hope they can trust to be knowledgeable may be very sensitive to your presentation. People also base their acceptance and appreciation on past experiences.
Look at the image above; what does this person’s body language convey to you? Self-confidence, anger, self-defense, or maybe pride? In the same way, this person could be some, all, or none of these things; people are hard to judge. Typically, it is said that arms crossed is a closed position, indicating self-protection and displaying a barrier. While arms down and loose indicate acceptance, you are friendly if you add a smile.
In each of these people’s photos, you can see an aspect of body language. Expressions, stance, and neatness. How each medical personnel presents presents will affect how a patient will ultimately judge their facility.
During the first primary care visit, Mrs. Jones had a visit with Doctor Nguyen. Mrs. Jones is 69 years old with cardiac issues, and her insurance has changed. Now, she must learn about a new doctor's office, how to get there, and a new doctor’s style. She had to use a tablet to check in, which was new to her. The nurse called her back to the exam room and explained that she would need to get into a patient gown with the front open to get an ECG. Mrs. Jones wasn't sure what an ECG meant but uncomfortably undressed. She put on a gown backward as directed and waited for the doctor whom she still hadn't met. She wondered if she would have to meet this new Doctor dressed in a backward patient's hospital gown and her socks. The more she thinks of this, the urge to get dressed and leave becomes pressing. Finally, a different person comes in, smiles, and pulls a rolling machine into the room. He has no name tag but reports he is the one who will do her ECG. He asked her to lie down, and as he proceeded to uncover her chest one side at a time and stick electrodes on her in various places, she remembered what an ECG must be and now wondered how much this was going to cost. She doesn't remember if her insurance pays for this once a year or how often. She asked the person performing the ECG, but he deferred to the nurse, who wasn't even in the room. She can't afford to spend a lot of money doing this. She thinks to herself, don't they have her records? Can't they see her past results from her previous primary care doctor, Doctor Olatunji? She feels powerless to change the situation due to the obvious power imbalance.
Points to consider:
When a person is entrusting their health to you and your colleagues, trust is paramount to them. Giving every patient the attention they want and deserve is sometimes difficult. They are, after all, paying for your services.
Look at your facility's reviews online. As there are many choices, our customers review these before choosing a doctor, don't you? Customer service complaints make up most of the complaints listed for every doctor who doesn't have five stars across the board. Sometimes, it's scheduling, wait times, and personal interactions; sometimes, it's more of a generalized complaint. However, the healthcare workers who made the client angry, feel disrespected, and dissatisfied are the ones they share about. This is not just an American question. Studies about patient satisfaction have been done worldwide. An interesting study in England by Gullandi et al. (2021) showed that measuring a patient's complete journey with the facility by offering short survey questions at the beginning and the end of the visit can give real-time information on improving your processes. The results note that providing customers with a quality experience is the key to customer satisfaction. This was measured in several areas, including the emotional state of the patient, time spent waiting on nurses or aids or doctors, comfort and cleanliness of the rooms, how clear and useful the information was given, and patient involvement in health care decisions.
Some basic customer service notes:
So much has changed in the healthcare sector in the last few decades. People born before the 1980s have not been raised on computers; therefore, many in their 60s, 70s, and up are likelier to find electronic technology in the healthcare sector more daunting. Before the 1980s, doctors’ offices were rarely combined with other facilities, and these patients saw the same doctors or doctors all their lives. This was a paternalistic relationship with a power balance weighted to the General Practitioner side (National Academies, 2021). As we have modernized since the turn of the century, we have added staff such as Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners and technological innovations such as computerized check-ins and patient portals. We have become extremely medically specialized. The power balance for the patient is now almost gone.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said and did but never how you made them feel” Maya Angelou.
CEUFast, Inc. is committed to furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). While reflecting on this course content, CEUFast, Inc. would like you to consider your individual perspective and question your own biases. Remember, implicit bias is a form of bias that impacts our practice as healthcare professionals. Implicit bias occurs when we have automatic prejudices, judgments, and/or a general attitude towards a person or a group of people based on associated stereotypes we have formed over time. These automatic thoughts occur without our conscious knowledge and without our intentional desire to discriminate. The concern with implicit bias is that this can impact our actions and decisions with our workplace leadership, colleagues, and even our patients. While it is our universal goal to treat everyone equally, our implicit biases can influence our interactions, assessments, communication, prioritization, and decision-making concerning patients, which can ultimately adversely impact health outcomes. It is important to keep this in mind in order to intentionally work to self-identify our own risk areas where our implicit biases might influence our behaviors. Together, we can cease perpetuating stereotypes and remind each other to remain mindful to help avoid reacting according to biases that are contrary to our conscious beliefs and values.