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.

Encore Post: Hospital Room as the Classroom of Recovery

July 1, 2016

Note: This is a post from 2014 that is still relevant to the hot-button issue of preventing readmissions. There are many ways to learn. However, the ultimate goal of all teaching is to

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Waiting, Waiting, and More Waiting: Is This Quality Care?

June 10, 2016

The more we wait, the more we hate waiting. And, when we are not feeling well or with a family member in the ED, waiting reaches the highest point of frustration. I have written this

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New Financial Motivation for Investing in the Patient Experience

May 20, 2016

The push to improve the patient experience was given financial teeth several years ago when HCAHPS scores were linked to reimbursements. The message was: Do poorly and be fined by penalties. Not necessarily

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Which Week Isn’t Patient Experience Week?

April 29, 2016

This is Patient Experience Week, but which week is not about the patient experience? During which week does a single patient matter less in what we do? Since the early

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The Age of the Patient Experience: When Do We Get Good At This?

April 22, 2016

Coming from the 2016 Beryl Institute Patient Experience Conference last week, like the 1000+ attendees, I’m both inspired and driven to move this whole discussion deeper. Not unlike how Descartes split

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Want to Improve the Patient Experience? Pay More Attention to the Room

April 7, 2016

Lists, surveys, multiple-choice HCAHPS questions, and operational manuals – the healthcare industry is trying to define and control the patient experience generically. Would we try to define any other human

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The Patient Experience: When We Accept the Unacceptable

March 25, 2016

My mother hated the word tolerance, especially when it came to race. She would say, “To tolerate is not to respect. It is ‘to put up with.’” I am in

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How Does the Hospital Room Support the Patient Experience?

March 11, 2016

A patient is admitted to a hospital room. Next to everything that happens — the tests, admission processes, many unknown people who continually enter and ask questions, the hospital room is her first entrance

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7 Features of A Compassionate Hospital Waiting Room

February 12, 2016

Compassion is evidenced in many ways, many of which are not verbal. Being compassionate is about a universal kindness that is real and genuine that shows itself in every aspect of

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Don’t Confuse Your Google Search With My Medical Degree

February 5, 2016

I read this statement on a mug recently and wondered if I was confused or believed what I read. How many Google searches have I done about any particular disease, drug,

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