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I'm on a committee at our hospital called the Standards Team. The purpose of the team is to devise a set of behavior standards that all staff will be required to meet in order to work in our organization; and then to educate the staff and hold each employee accountable for living those behaviors.
It turns out that this is a pretty big job. We spent months fine-tuning the document and narrowing the focus until we had specific directives we all felt were crucial to success in our organization. One of the standards includes the line: "I will not say, "That's not my job." In fact, I insisted this line be put into the Standards verbatim.
One of my pet peeves has always been people who use that expression. We're in health care. Our job is to take care of the patient. To me that at means if the patient needs someone to call her daughter, that's my job. If I can't call, I can find someone who will.
But what about when something has spilled on the floor? Is it my job to clean it up? And if a patient needs to check out her mammogram records, am I supposed to do that, too? After all, that's why we have a medical records department, right?
Attitudes like that hurt patient care. My point is that we should all think of our patients as our guests and take a personal interest in them and their needs. While we're all busy, we need to take ownership of the patient's experience and do whatever it takes to help. Often that means enlisting the assistance of other departments or people, but sometimes it means just doing what's right, even when it may not be our job, technically speaking.
And do you know what the funny thing about that is? When you do something for a patient that's not your job, those are the times you feel best about your job.
Sandra Mueller is the technical manager of women's services at Adventist Hinsdale Hospital's Outpatient Centers in Chicago.
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