What is the voice of your brand?

In health care, your brand voice is your people — your patients, their families and your staff.

Your brand is what each of these groups say about your organization.

It's what patients tell others about how they were treated. It's what they whisper, good or bad, about what they witnessed your staff doing in their idle time.

And it's what your staff — doctors, nurses, caregivers and non-caregivers — say about the what it's like to work for you.

When you have built a strong organizational culture — one of inclusion, listening, transparency and compassion — then you have a strong brand story to tell.

An out-of-industry example comes from the Danish shipping company Maersk, which sheds light on how focusing on the voices of an organization can bring life and attention to a brand. Writing for AdPulp, David Burn notes:

It is safe to say, “brand voice” is no longer something best whipped up in an ad agency brainstorm. Rather, a real living brand voice — one with resonance and power — is an amalgamation of the human voices who work at the company.

In health care, those voices must include the patients and their families. They already tell stories about their experience — you want those stories to always be positive and enlightening.

Source: AdPulp

Experience the exciting challenges of a career in procurement in Maersk Group by following Nicole who is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the video she explains her daily activities and responsibilities while working for Maersk Drilling, and goes on to explain how these are nicely balanced with her home life and personal hobbies.

4 steps to better patient engagement

Communication, communication, communication. And communication.

That's the core of the four steps hospitals and health systems can take to improve patient engagement, according to a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

"Many of the errors we see in health care stem from communication problems,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, MD. “That’s why we developed this resource, to give hospitals practical, evidence-based information to improve communication on the front lines of health care — and ultimately keep patients safer.”

Here are the four steps the AHRQ report recommends:

• Be advisors. How hospitals can recruit and train patients and family members to serve as advisors and train clinicians and hospital staff to work effectively with them.
• Promote better communication at the bedside to improve quality. How patients and families can interact with the health care team, understand the different roles that team members play and see the importance of being partners with clinicians.
• Participate in bedside shift reports. Teaching patients and families what a bedside shift report is, how they can contribute to it and how nurses can support those contributions.
• Prepare to leave the hospital. Different approaches clinicians can use to plan and keep track of the tasks that need to be done before a patient is discharged from the hospital.

All of these focus on clear and transparent communication and inclusion of patients and family members in their care plans, including setting appropriate and achievable expectations.

Download the whole report here.

This post originally appeared on EngagingPatients.org, a blog dedicated to advancing patient and family-centered care. I am a member of the Engaging Patients Advisory Board and write for the blog. 

Setting tasty expectations

Is it scripting — or coincidence?

I was at two Whole Foods Markets in the past week — in Hingham, Mass., and Cranston, R.I. — and had two similar, friendly exchanges with the check out clerks.

As the clerk scanned a particular item, he (men in both cases) asked me a casual question. It went something like this:

Clerk: "Have you tried that before?"

Me: "No, first time."

Clerk (enthusiastically, but very genuine): "It's amazing. You're going to love it. And it's so tasty, especially for being something so quick and easy to make."

Me (now eagerly awaiting to try it): "Sounds great!"

That was it. Some seemingly benign banter. But it was all about setting my expectations.

Health care struggles with setting expectations and it is reflected in patient satisfaction scores. An easy fix — and one that every patient and their family would welcome — is a little more frequent communication from caregivers, especially setting expectations for what is about to occur.

And when you don't set expectations, you don't have an opportunity to exceed them! 

So whether by scripting or coincidence — or better yet, culture — these two Whole Foods employees exceeded my shopping expectations.