Put it all together
While getting existing employees involved in the process and
holding them accountable helped drive the changes necessary
to make St. Joseph a better organization, you also need to
focus efforts on making sure any new employees fit into your
new system.
“Hospitals can be very cold,” he says. “When patients are feeling very vulnerable and at risk emotionally, physically, mentally — some hospitals do a real good job of bringing warmth and
compassion to that circumstance, others don’t.”
To find employees who can deliver the type of compassion
and caring necessary to achieve the organization’s goals,
Ainsworth takes extra care in the hiring process. When recruiting, his team tries to find the motivation a person had for entering the health care field in the first place by asking a series of
questions that attempt to determine if the candidate is simply
looking for employment or something more.
By showing his staff the power of asking questions from the
very beginning, Ainsworth is working to ensure that a patient
will never feel cold and alone at St. Joseph.
“We clearly understand that just being nice at the bedside
isn’t good enough,” he says. “People are here to be healed, and
they’re only healed through a combination of people who are
treating them with compassion but also people who bring great
clinical competency to the bedside, as well.”
Ainsworth knows perfect care is a goal that will transcend
many five-year plans. Providing sacred encounters is another
goal that will never go away. As part of its goal of creating
healthy communities, St. Joseph spent $48 million in fiscal
2007 on wellness outreach initiatives in the surrounding area
— but with obesity and other problems still running rampant,
that goal won’t be crossed off Ainsworth’s checklist anytime
soon, either. Even after achieving significant improvement in
patient satisfaction surveys and being showered with awards
and accolades, Ainsworth’s work isn’t finished.
“It’s going to be a long time coming,” he says. “But what it
does do is it provides motivation for a quest. On a daily basis
we’re saying, ‘We’ve got a lot of room to go to be perfect, but
we’ve got to keep trying.’”
HOW TO REACH: St. Joseph Hospital of Orange, (714) 633-9111 or
www.sjo.org
