On April 12th, Laura Swaney will speak on a panel at Becker’s Hospital Review 9th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 11-14, 2018 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Laura’s session, click here.
Question: What did you notice about your healthcare experience the last time you were at the receiving end as a patient?
Laura Swaney: As a patient, I personally felt the lack of coordination between primary care, specialists, and hospital despite a unified EMR. It was apparent that the patient must be vigilant to ensure communication among care teams is occurring and must remain the driver of their healthcare experience or it feels as if they’ll slip through the cracks. Despite the utilization of technology designed to aid in communication, healthcare feels so big business, uncoordinated and sterile.
At the time of my experience, I did not receive care within my own system, however the takeaways for me are something I use daily when considering new programs, processes and the patient’s experience. I remember how alone and frustrated I felt and I worked in healthcare.
As healthcare leaders, it is our job to walk in our patient’s shoes. We are not there to simply heal them. We are there to care for them at a time that is usually fraught with fear and significant stress. Ensuring a well coordinated, seamless, efficient clinical experience delivered with passionate care and empathy is exactly what our patients deserve and need.
Q: As a leader, what is the best investment you made in your own professional development in the past five years?
LS: Investment in professional development can take many forms. The obvious answer would be my work with an executive coach. However, the further I advance as a healthcare executive, seemingly the further away I go from the patient. One of the best things I did in recent years was to volunteer at the hospital where I was employed to work one hour per week with the pediatric hematology and oncology patients. This simple exercise proved beneficial in so many ways and allowed me to get to know our patients and families on an entirely new level. Volunteering weekly was so different from walking the units and simply speaking with families. By getting to know the families and having an intimate understanding of their stories, I used the experience to shape how I evaluated situations and made decisions in the workplace. I was able to carry the families’ experiences with me into our boardroom and it fueled me to improve our processes, communication and the patient’s experience. This exercise shaped me and made me a more empathetic healthcare administrator. I am definitely a better person and leader for having done this simple practice.
