6
The Home Care Association of Florida
FEATURE
T
he answer is obvious isn’t it?
It has to be based on clinical
protocol and outcomes,
doesn’t it? Before you skip
the rest of this article because of what
seems so obvious, one more question –
what has the most significant impact on
clinical protocol and outcomes?
Let’s get the hard facts out of the way
– AMN HealthNews (online) quoted
Barbara Balk, RN, Ed.D, senior faculty
member of the Institute For Health
(IHI) when she said, “We can only treat
patients as well as we treat each other.” Is
that true? Yes!
Mathew McHugh PhD., RN, assistant
professor of nursing at the University
of Pennsylvania published a study in
Health Affairs that stated, “the percentage
of patients who reported they would
‘definitely recommend’ a hospital to their
loved ones decreased by 2% for every 10%
of nurses who expressed dissatisfaction
with their jobs.” The evidence for the
connection between job satisfaction and job
performance and retention is conclusive.
The problem for most home care
companies is that what’s true for the rest
of the country is also true for you. Gallup
has concluded that as much as 50% of the
American workforce across the board is
disengaged at work. Disengaged staff don’t
give stellar care, either clinical or personal.
Barbara Balk agrees when she concluded,
“Employees want to feel that their
opinion matters, that their input is valid
and that leadership is listening to them.
When you fully engage with staff and
providers, you get that commitment
to the organization at a deep and
powerful level, and that’s when you
get results!”
Ok! Enough! I get it. But the real
question is this – how do you increase
job satisfaction? How do you get
employees engaged? How do you retain
good staff? I have spent the last decade
looking for answers to these questions
and I have discovered the five most
critical things a leader MUST do if they
want to improve job satisfaction.
In my most recent book, A Leader’s
Gift – How to Earn the Right to Be
Followed, I describe these five things
By Barry Banther
What Drives
Patient Outcomes?
