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.

LATEST POST

4 Ways to Practice Environmental Compassion

September 18, 2025

Environmental compassion starts with a simple promise: notice everything that affects a person’s senses, then design it to help them heal. It means being intentional about sound, light, visuals, temperature, touchpoints, and timing

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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 Are Patient Safety and the Patient Experience Related?

December 2, 2016

I am confused. How can patients have good experiences if they do not feel safe? And, how is patient safety evidenced beyond the accidents that do not happen? Safety precautions

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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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Nature Videos on Election Day – What An Idea!

November 11, 2016

Choosing to ease the stress of Election Day earlier this week, the Weather Channel broadcast 9 hours of stunning sunset and ocean video. To soothe us. What an idea! For

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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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Encore Post: “Do No Harm” is Not Enough Anymore for Patient Safety

October 28, 2016

Note: This is a popular post from 2014 that is still relevant to the critical issue of patient safety. Florence Nightingale was not only the Mother of Modern Nursing; she also was the

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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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Pain Management: Life-Supporting or Life-Threatening?

October 14, 2016

Without question, pain is the only symptom that crosses all ages, diagnoses, and specialties. One of the best solutions ever developed for pain management was aspirin, followed by every other

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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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