Hospital soap
If you have read this blog for a while you will know that I feel very much that lazy management can result in poorly run hospital wards, especially geriatric wards. Currently my wife and I are visiting a much better hospital ward. It is still for the elderly, but it is a “rehab” ward, where the object is to get the patients back on their feet, and preferably back to their own homes.
Brightening up?
What is the secret of this part of the hospital? Well, it helps that the place is bright and at least seems airy. But the main ingredient of this new magic formula is a smile. Well, lots of smiles. The staff seem very cheery and upbeat, and everyone joins in the mood.
Of course not everything that happens in a hospital is a reason to be cheery, but if people are upbeat and approach their work happily it affects everyone around them, and especially the patients, or customers if you will.
The great thing about this ward is that the happy attitude is not artificial. It is not put on. The staff really are happy, and the patients and of course the visitors are caught up in it.
I commented to one of the nurses going off duty how happy everyone in the ward seemed to be. She said that it was a happy place. She said that any disagreement among the staff was soon forgotten, and she enjoyed working there.
I am sure a happy patient will be helped to get better more quickly, being supported at every step. I sneaked a look at “our” patient’s notes, and could see how attentively she was checked at least every hour, and that she was seen to be eating properly. They are clearly going beyond what everybody would normally expect.
Service with a smile
I always found in my former employments that everything seemed to run better when everyone was happy. There were less mistakes and less mishaps. The clients were looked after to the best of everyone’s ability.
I believe that service with a smile helps a great deal. In face to face meetings whether business meetings or just in a shop, I find a nice smile relaxes whoever I am talking to. It is easier to do business.
Smiling can be virtual too. That means being cheery on the telephone, and writing letters and emails in a friendly fashion while of course being careful that the written word is not misunderstood in the absence of an actual smile.
Just making our customer of client happy at very stage will make them more comfortable, more likely to come back to us and more likely to refer us.
Even after a client has paid a bill, I like to follow up to check they really received everything they expected. Just occasionally they may have had a different expectation through something they misunderstood, but we still have the opportunity to smooth the edges and keep them as our big supporters. That is a virtual or figurative smile, but it is still in the vein of keeping our customers happy.
Who have you smiled at today? It is great to get one back, isn’t it? It gives you a nice warm feeling, doesn’t it?
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