The case study: Crowded Clinic provided some good examples of what many busy clinics have to deal with on daily basis. Lately, there have been multiples computer systems to improve scheduling problems for the outpatient clinics, such as “Open Access”, “AdvancedMD”, “Medical Office Online”, and many more. These programs do help with daily operations of a medical office, however, in order to make patients feel more welcome few other things can be implemented. Such as letting receptionists handle arriving patients right away, instead of making patients wait while the receptionist handles phone calls, assist with prescriptions, and/or handle emergencies. It means that everyone in the office should multi task and should be cross trained, so they all can help with front office duties. This should be required upon hiring. Per Carrie Rossenfeld from Medical Office Today: other medical office personnel can be handling all phone calls, leaving receptionists do their primary responsibilities – checking patients in, answering their questions, and making them feel comfortable. (Rossenfeld, N. D.)
Waiting room of a medical office is the first thing patients see when they come in. The waiting room should have a lot of sun light, calming music playing in the background, soft paint color on the walls. The waiting room at the office should have some posters on different languages for those multilingual patients to feel more comfortable. The seats should be soft to accommodate needs of patients with chronic back pain. After all, patients do spend a lot of time waiting for a doctor appointment. Those uncomfortable seats cause patients to get anxious. They should have a water cooler to be available for patients, as well as tissues.
Front office perso...
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...possible and might be pricy.
Works Cited
Rossenfeld, C. (n.d.). Making Wait Time More Pleasant for Your Patients You Can Alleviate the Angst of Waiting and Keep Patients Happy. Retrieved from http://www.medwaittime.com/news/medicalofficetoday-makingwaittime.php
Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence US Army Training and Doctrine Command Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Arab Cultural Awareness: 58 Factsheets. (2006, December). Retrieved from www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/arabculture.pdf
Marohn, K., & Dickrel, S. (2012, December 09). Medical Interpreters Help Patients, Doctors Communicate. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2012/12/07/medical-interpreters-help-communicate/1755007/
Brolley, E., Tu, A., & Wong, E. (2002, January).Communicating With Your Chinese Patient. Retrieved from depts.washington.edu/pfes/PDFs/ChineseCultureClue.pdf
There is a need for a diverse workforce and appropriate interpreters for providing the best patient care. It is often seen that bilingual interpreters are hired by healthcare organizations without much skills. This can lead to medical errors putting patient safety at risk. Therefore, hiring appropriate interpreters with assessment of their skills is critical in healthcare organization. Interpreters can help healthcare organizations by:
A hospital visit causes much stress and anxiety for anyone. Hence, as a healthcare professional, you want to ensure that the patient receives high-quality service and satisfaction regarding their health during their hospital stay. Upon research, it was evident that minority patients that have difficultly speaking English or the native language have poor satisfaction and receive poor-quality of healthcare due to the communication barriers. Communication barriers such as language differences, cultural and religious background cause complexity and dilemmas at the hospital for both the doctor and patient. Hence, to reduce this barrier, cultural experts should be employed in hospitals as an official policy so all hospitals are aware of all their patients’ background and will be comply and respect the decisions made. After all, everyone should be able to understand and communicate information regarding one’s health without struggles and miscommunication regardless they speak the native language or not. Miscommunication is the last thing you want at a hospital as it would cause anxiety and fear for anyone if the medical doctor could not help you understand your
Dr. Jey Arthur, of Sutter Memorial Hospital, is an idol when it comes to physicians within a hospital’s Emergency Room. During his shift, the entire atmosphere of the Emergency Room changes. Nurses become more interactive with their patients and the patient’s rooms are no longer filled with misery and hopelessness. From the second the patient is assigned a room, Dr. Arthur is constantly visiting keeping the patient well informed and up to date on what the physicians and nurses are doing and their progress. From my time shadowing Dr. Aurther, not a single patient had lost a smile when he left the room. Beyond the care of the patient, Dr. Arthur has established absolute order with those working in the Emergency Room. Dr. Arthur has made himself
Tucker, Judith E., and University Georgetown. Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers .Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Nov. 2013.
The goal of this lesson is to explore how we can improve communication to eliminate language barriers between healthcare providers and patients in our organization and to establish culturally and linguistically appropriate goals, that provide safe, equal, and quality care to all our clients regardless of race, ethnic, or socioeconomic status. At the end of this lesson we should be
Upon returning to work, Jack changes his outlook towards his job, his coworkers, patients and his interns. He teaches his students exactly what it will feel like to be the patient. He was able to take his experience and teach others the importance of communicating empathy in the healthcare field. He is now able to look past his patients’ illnesses and treat them as patients with feelings and respect. The lesson he takes with him is was how important life is when we use the right communication.
Effective communication prevents medical errors, improve patient- therapist relationship, as well as prevents disappointments and friction. It is essential to find out the level of health literacy of an individual, as well as the proficiency in English. According to Divi, Koss, Schmaltz & Loeb (2007), there is a risk of patient 's safety due to the language barrier. Based on the study of Divi et al. (2007), among 832 English speaking patients and 251 patients with limited English fluency, 49% of the patients of their study have limited English fluency that associated with physical harm with a rate of 29.5% patients that are fluent in English are physically injured. Partially injured and death occurs with patients with constrained English proficiency (52.4%), as compared to patients with English fluency (35.9%) (Divi et al., 2007). Divi et al. (2007) suggested providing access to qualified language interpreters for patients with limited English proficiency to prevent more harm. Effective communicating is not only important to patients with limited, or inadequate English proficiency but also to individuals with impaired vision, hearing, and people that unable to speak.It is also important about the patient 's privacy. Another knowledge from the book mentioned above is effective communication regardless of individuals culture.
Patients make up a huge part in achieving service excellence for the healthcare industry. My healthcare facility helps the patients redeem themselves and correct with sensitivity. The patients are my customers, and my healthcare facility must remember our mission and vision of giving spectacular healthcare to our customers who are our priority. By giving quality customer service, my healthcare facility earns the gratitude and patronage of its patients. The patients pass their experiences to their families and that keeps my healthcare facilities’ reputation successful
There is considerable evidence of the Lee’s having both low print and oral literacy. The Lee’s spoke very little English; they also were illiterate in both English and Hmong (Faidman, 1997). Another contributing factor to their health literacy was their beliefs about medicine. Because of the dissonance between the Lee’s beliefs and the American medical system, it was unclear if the Lee’s fully understood the cause of Lia’s epilepsy or the purpose of her prescribed medication. Their motivation to learn may also have been a factor; they believed they already knew what caused Lia’s epilepsy and what healing she needed. Faidman describes cases of successfully communicating western medical ideals with Hmong people, but Lia’s case is not an example of effective cross-cultural understanding. The Lee’s low level of health literacy severely impacted their ability to successfully understand and administer Lia’s medication, which may have negatively affected her health outcomes. Some strategies to improve communication suggested by Egbert and Nanna (2009) that may have helped the Lee’s include using plain language that is culturally sensitive, spending more time with the patient to ensure understanding, and using a, “...teach-back method, in which patients repeat back to the provider the information they believe they have just
Although the lives of so many of these patients are not easy, they still find a way to keep going and not give up on their loved ones or themselves. That in itself gives me hope. “The Waiting Room” reveals how difficult a day in the emergency room can be, but in the midst of all the stress still lies a lot of hope. I respect every person in this documentary for sharing their story and perspective because in turn, it has widened mine. No story is the same, but at the end of the day, everyone is just fighting to stay
Going to the doctor can be a frightening experience for many people. Choosing a doctor is a difficult process that can result in a poor experience at the appointment or worse in some cases. First impressions play a large role in a patients response to the practice overall. “Great Smiles” focuses on this concept and shapes their office procedures to make all first visits a positive experience. This office is located on a busy main road in an upper class suburban area of Michigan. The buildin...
In order for primary care practices to be successful they have to arrange their office setting and scheduling to satisfy their consumers’ needs. Bodenheimer (2003) advocates for improving primary care accessibility by arranging their offices into teams. He explains each team would have “one primary care physician, two non-physicians clinicians (nurse practitioners or physician assistants), three nursing staff, and a receptionist” (p.797). He states patients will be greeted by their team who knows their h...
increases in patient satisfaction, which in a hospital setting is important not only for our
The Arab world consists of twenty-two countries encompassing all of North Africa and much of the Middle East. The Arab people number over 360 million and while they share a common language, there is a surprising degree of diversity among them, whether in terms of nationality, culture, religion, economics, or politics. (McCaffrey, 3) Most inhabitants of the Ar...
the patients to find a common bond with another person. Giving the patient the comfort