Professionalism among allied health staff. The PLEASE CARE program.
Professionalism affects the quality of medical care in terms of clinical outcomes, safety, and service. Although often talked about by physicians, professionalism is important for all who are engaged in clinical care. In our continuous effort to improve quality at Mayo Clinic, we hypothesized that patient satisfaction was affected by the professionalism of the allied health staff. Our aim was to improve patient satisfaction by training employees on behaviors and attitudes that could significantly affect patient satisfaction. More than 4,000 allied health staff have gone through the training program called "PLEASE CARE." More than 2,000 patients received point-of-care surveys before and after implementation of the program. We found patient satisfaction with the allied health staff increased from 71% to 77% after the training. We also saw improvement in each of the individual PLEASE CARE attributes. This demonstrates that enhancement of professionalism among allied health staff can have a positive effect on the experience of patients.
Locke
G Richard
GR
Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, USA.
Berndt
Michele
M
Woychick
Naomi
N
Gilles
Kathleen
K
Schryver
Michael
M
Brennan
Michael
M
D000046:Academic Medical Centers; D000488:Allied Health Personnel / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum; D004645:Empathy; D006808:Humanism; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training; D008910:Minnesota; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D024382:Professional Role / Q000523:psychology*