TEDx Talk on Patient Experience
How can healthcare leaders improve patient experience? In his TEDx Talk, former Chief Experience Officer Jonathan Sachs explores how communication, clarity, and empathy can make healthcare better for patients and families.
Recently, I was thinking about why I care so much about hospital patient experience.
Was it because that's how, coming from a non-clinicial background, I could help patients directly when I was a hospital executive?
Was it purely about helping patients and their families during a scary time?
Maybe it was seeing how working on the patient experience supported all of our business goals when I led operations.
Those were all a part of the story, but not nearly the whole thing.
So many people have an experience in the healthcare system that didn't feel right and knew in their hearts that it could be so much better.
That's what I saw when both of my parents had neurosurgery when I was in my early 20s. Navigating the health care system was brutally confusing and inconsistent. Some of my parents' caregivers were incredible. Sometimes the way my parents were treated, both as patients and as supportive family members, was shocking.
Both of my parents had complications from their surgery and were readmitted. I felt they had longer recoveries than they should have because of the lack of communication, clarity, and empathy.
It became clear to me that while patients understood their care through their experience, it wasn't seen as part of the clinical care plan. And that just didn't make sense to me.
Like so many others who saw what I saw, I said to myself, "Someday, I want to play my part in making this better."
When I was a health care executive, I got my chance. Thanks to several people's encouragement and support including Terry Forde, James G Lee, Susan Savery, Mary Greenberg, Tom Grant, Ann Roda, Dan Cochran, Brent Reitz, Chris Ghion, Erik Wangsness, Eunmee Shim, MSN, FACHE, Brendan Johnson, Kristen L. Pruitt, LCPC,MPA,NCC, Judy Zoppi, Alyson Schuster and many others, I had the chance to lead in the patient experience discipline in a variety of roles including as a Vice President and a Chief Experience Officer.
So when I had the opportunity to give a TEDx Talk, something I've been wanting to do for years, I knew just what I wanted to talk about.
If you work in health care or have ever been a patient, you know there is much more work to do. It was my honor to have this platform to talk about solutions that can make receiving care better.
What is your patient experience story?
Jonathan Sachs is the founder of Apex Leadership Institute. His experience spans senior health care administration, patient experience transformation, government leadership, executive coaching, and university education — a rare combination that positions Apex uniquely at the intersection of leadership development, health care operations, and frontline patient care.
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