Susan E. Mazer, Ph.D. Blog

Thoughts and ideas on healthcare

Hi, and welcome to my blog! I'm Susan E. Mazer -- a knowledge expert and thought leader on how the environment of care impacts the patient experience. Topics I write about include safety, satisfaction, hospital noise, nursing, care at the bedside, and much more.

The Patient Experience As an iExperience

February 10, 2017

Now that Apple has given us an iSomething world and digital technologies have come to healthcare, patients can now have iExperiences. What does that mean? At NYU Langone Medical Center,

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Is Whole Person Care What Patients Want?

January 20, 2017

Whole Person Care is a concept that’s been a focus of many U.S. healthcare practitioners recently. But is Whole Person Care what patients really want? Our healthcare system is a

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The Patient Experience is Not About Obamacare

January 13, 2017

As many of us struggle with the uncertainty in the U.S. healthcare system, it’s important to realize that the patient experience is not about the system. It is about human

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Patient Experience Knows Neither Holidays Nor the Days After

December 9, 2016

Holidays are “the best of times and the worst of times.” The intensity of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s brings much joy to many and as much melancholy and sadness

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How Do We Improve the Patient Experience in a Time of Uncertainty?

November 18, 2016

While we have all heard that change is inevitable, it is also our natural instinct to seek and find anchors of stability. This is especially true when it comes to

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Does Whole Person Care Improve the Patient Experience?

November 4, 2016

You want to provide the best care and experience for your patients, right? But are you simply going down the list of HCAHPS questions, using this 31-question survey as kind

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Evidence-Based Medicine May Not Always Be Best for the Patient Experience

October 21, 2016

Since 1990 when David Sackett first identified Evidence-Based Medicine as a framework to standardize how physicians diagnose and treat their patients, the term has been all but bastardized. Evidence-Based Medicine

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What’s the Difference Between Patient Satisfaction & Patient Experience?

October 7, 2016

When I heard Press Ganey Founder Irwin Press speak many years ago, he offered the perspective of an anthropologist, looking at healthcare as a culture and the factors that inform

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Overall Hospital Star Rating System is Seriously Flawed

August 5, 2016

When I first heard that CMS planned on introducing a hospital star rating system, I thought, “We’ve done it! We’ve finally reduced healthcare to 5 stars, like a Motel-8!” This

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Music as Environmental Design: What Does the Patient Hear?

July 8, 2016

Today I walked to Starbucks about mile and a half from my home. It’s a good way to get an early three-mile walk in before my day starts. I have done this for

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