What We Celebrate During Patient Experience Week, April 24-28

April 21, 2017

Healthcare has never been about anything but the patient experience. Florence Nightingale put it as the guiding mission in her Notes on Nursing.

In Nightingale’s day, there were neither antibiotics nor pain meds. There was only the environment in which care was delivered and the active commitment by nurses to relieve patients’ suffering.

Today, we have more technology and more people. And in many cases, the human experience has been reduced down to medical protocols.

Patient Experience is Lived Every Day

The patient experience is so much more; it is lived minute-to-minute by a person whose life is in the hands of the hospital and uncertainty abounds.

The patient experience is not about a week or a day.

It is about the backstory prior to becoming a patient and the life that ensues. It is about the hope and resilience of the human spirit that is handed from the nurse, physician, and others back to patients and their families to strengthen their capacity to enter life anew.

Everyone Matters

So, what do we celebrate during Patient Experience Week?

We celebrate those who provide compassionate care for patients in hospitals. The nurses, doctors, housekeepers, lab techs, volunteers, and people from environmental services who surround patients —  those who change the sheets, empty the garbage, change bandages, bring meals, and watch over every detail that matters to the patient’s condition.

And we also celebrate family members who are at the bedside or taking care of things at home. Those who are working to pay for medical insurance and deductibles.

They do this all year long, every day, every hour.

So, this Patient Experience Week, let us focus everyone who cares for patients, those “others” who we seldom recognize.

More Thoughts on The Patient Experience

If you’d like to read more about my thoughts on the patient experience, please download a free copy of my e-book, “Improving The Patient Experience, One Person at a Time.”

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