health education | wellness

Category: Provider Education

5 Ways to Engage with Patients More Effectively

One of the biggest buzzwords in the corporate world, at universities, and in the health care business is engagement. Whether you are doing it through face-to-face consultation, email correspondence, social media platforms, or by having a well-trained and attentive staff who can answer patient questions, engaging effectively is a vital asset. To help generate that kind of value-adding engagement, here are five tips or ways to engage with patients more effectively.

Stay in Touch

Whether it is through newsletters, Twitter tweets, Facebook updates, or in-office health seminars and similar events, keeping in touch is the key to patient engagement.

Patient Surveys

A great way to get feedback from your patients while making them feel more involved in their health care is to use anonymous electronic surveys. Ask patients questions to determine how satisfied they are, how informed they are, or what suggestions they have for your office.

In-House Workshops

Another engagement tool that patients love is when you host health-related seminars at your office. These could be about topics like nutrition or exercise, or you could invite professionals from complementary modalities like massage or acupuncture to give presentations and answer questions.

Invest in Staff Training

If your staff – from the receptionist to the lab technician to your nurses – are better equipped to know how to be active listeners, they can become your eyes and ears. That alone can significantly magnify the level of patient engagement as they continuously dialog with patients on any number of different issues and consciously nurture interpersonal patient/provider relationships.

Schedule More Wisely

Because health care professionals are so busy these days, it is easy to overlook the value and importance of patient engagement. The most direct kind of engagement is talking one-on-one with your patient, and the best opportunity to make that happen is during routine office visits. So set aside an extra 10 minutes per patient and you’ll exponentially increase the level of engagement.

July 21, 2015
Super Easy Mind-Body Techniques for Hospital Workers

Hospitals are a culture unlike any other. In many ways they function just like any other workplace environment. But anyone who even visits a hospital can quickly recognize that the work done there by staffers requires a special kind of person and an extraordinary commitment to the health care profession. The rest of the population shows up at hospitals to receive acute care, potentially life-saving treatment, or reassurance that they and their loved ones are properly looked after, 24/7.

That puts a huge demand and responsibility on the shoulders of hospital workers, who must maintain a calm, patient, highly professional demeanor – even when under great duress. So here are some helpful mind-body techniques that are very easy to do and can give you wonderful relief from the stress you may experience on the job.

Super Easy Mind-Body Techniques

Remind Yourself to Breathe!

Whenever you feel your blood pressure rising and the stress accumulating, remember to breathe. Pay attention to your diaphragm, breath slowly and deeply. That simple act can instantly help you find your “center” and feel grounded and calm.

Use Visualization Techniques

As you breathe those calming breathes visualize all of the stress you feel on the in-breath. Then, as you slowly exhale, visualize all of that tension and mental agitation leaving your body and evaporating. It may sound very “new age,” but even Navy SEALS use this kind of effective technique.

Nourish Yourself with Solitude

Wherever you work, find a personal sanctuary. Maybe it’s in the hospital chapel or on the roof, or just a quiet corner of a stairwell. Retreat there when the chaos becomes too much and treat yourself to a few precious minutes of pure solitude.

Calm Down Your Diet

You are what you eat, so to ensure healthier mind/body alignment eat a balanced, nutritious diet. But avoid the sugars and caffeinated drinks because those can cause irritating spikes in blood sugar, dehydration, and an elevated heart rate – all of which make you antsy and less able to stay cool, calm, and collected.

As the old saying goes, “physician, heal thyself.” Whether you are an actual physician or work in a hospital setting in some other capacity, you need to take care of yourself – for the sake of your own wellness and work/life balance. So consider incorporating these mind-body techniques into your lifestyle as a daily habit. You’ll feel better and be able to perform at your best for the betterment of your entire hospital team and the patients whom you serve.

July 15, 2015
Medication Reconciliation: Tips For Improvement
There are literally thousands of different medicines on the market being prescribed every day. It is no wonder, then, that unwanted and adverse drug interactions have the potential to be one of the most dangerous areas of modern health care delivery.

Did you know that just being a patient within the health care system in the United States subjects you to one of the leading causes of death in the nation, ranked right up there near cancer and heart disease? That’s right – being hospitalized, for example, can immediately raise a person’s risk of death, and drug interaction is one of the reasons for that shocking statistic.

For that reason, it is critical that you take special precautions to ensure the best practices of medication reconciliation.

How to Improve Medication Reconciliation
- Always request an up-to-date and complete list of each patient’s current medications and specific dosages.
- The list should not just include prescribed drugs but also over-the-counter medications and supplements like vitamins, supplements, and herbs.
- Also obtain records regarding any allergies or sensitivities to medicines that they may have.
When recommending or prescribing any medications make sure that you reconcile those against these patient lists, and take care to be alert to any potential there may be for a mixture of medications to create an adverse chemical reaction. If those overseeing the patient’s care change or the patient is transferred to another health care provider, make sure that the new caregivers receive full documentation.

Upon discharge, provide the patient with a newly revised list of their medications. If they have other caregivers – for example, if they are a child whose parents will administer the medications – be sure that you communicate to those authorized parties as well to ensure a seamless and healthy transition. Be sure to ask if the patient or legal caregiver has any questions about how often they need to take their medications, the dosages, and any other guidance (such as the need to take meds with meals) so that there is a risk-controlled and well-informed continuum of care.
July 2, 2015
Improving Patient Experience: Can We Learn from Disney?

Disney World, despite being an enormous facility that receives vast numbers of visitors every hour of the day, somehow manages to earn praise for superior customer service. About 70% of Disney customers are so pleased, in fact, that they return to the theme park for future vacations. When thinking about improving patient experience, providers can learn by observing how Disney handles its customers.

Here are four of the top ideas that can guide healthcare professionals toward increased goodwill and better customer service evaluations.

Frontline Resources

Disney supports those who interact directly with customers with sufficient tools and technologies to solve problems and answer questions quickly and decisively. There is also direct access to managers and decision makers, so that if a frontline employee cannot resolve a problem or answer a question, they can find someone who can without unnecessary and frustrating delays.

Courtesy

All employees are trained to make courtesy a priority, regardless of how difficult a situation may be, in order to put customers at ease and ensure that they feel respected, listened to, and appreciated. Employees are also offered special customer service training, including role playing of various scenarios, so that they fully understand how to execute their responsibilities in a professional manner.

Scripted Responses

Everyone at Disney is on the same page, so that the brand message and image projected is reliably constant and consistent. Part of the reason that kind of continuity and teamwork is so effective is that employees have scripts they can follow when greeting customers, answering questions, resolving problems, or responding to emergency situations. Rather than feeling unprepared, they are already knowledgeable about what to say and how to respond, and they can then focus their energy and attention in a calm and poised way to ensure that the customer’s needs are met.

Exit Success

Disney also makes sure that exiting its facility is a smooth transition, even creating systems to help keep track of where people parked so that they don’t have trouble locating their cars. You may not need to help patients find their vehicles, of course, but the idea or philosophy represented by that story is that when customers have a good exit experience they leave with a good feeling. When improving patient experience, healthcare facilities should make the communication of final instructions, answering of questions, and filling out of exit paperwork as efficient and easy as possible.

June 30, 2015
Reverse Obesity in 5 Simple Steps

Obesity is a serious problem and a primary contributor to risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. Because so many young people are too obese to join the military, top-ranked generals at the Pentagon even consider the obesity epidemic a threat to America’s national security. The CDC also reports that more than one out of every three people in the USA are obese. Follow these steps to reverse obesity now.

Stay Active to Reverse Obesity

Not only does being physically active help burn calories to ensure that you can do a better job of managing your weight, but it has other benefits as well. Cardio exercise can be a natural mood enhancer and help you sleep better at night.

Avoid Processed Foods

Dieting is hard enough when you know what you are eating. But if you buy prepared packaged foods you may have no idea what was used in the recipe. In many cases, processed foods include exorbitant amounts of sodium that is bad for your health and increases unwanted weight gain. So cut down on processed foods to help reverse obesity.

Satisfy Your Hunger

Many people who are obese eat all the time but still have hunger pangs, because they are simply not getting enough nutrition. You can eat tons of junk food and still be hungry, whereas eating a healthy, balanced diet of nutrition-rich foods curbs your diet by giving your body genuine nourishment and real sustainable energy.

Educate Your Children

One of the main contributors to epidemic obesity is that people are not knowledgeable about proper food choices or healthy habits like daily exercise. So share your knowledge of those things with children so that they will grow up healthier, smarter, and less susceptible to obesity.

Get a Good Night’s Sleep

While it may sound counter intuitive, sleeping at least eight hours a night can help you control your weight reverse obesity. That’s because a lack of proper sleep disrupts the body’s metabolism and interferes with proper digestion. So get enough sleep and that will actually help you fight unwanted weight gain.

June 28, 2015