At Jupiter Medical Center, we care for sick patients every day. We have a highly-skilled nurses staff who are trained and educated to provide excellent healthcare. We deal with the daily operations of keeping a hospital running – assisting physicians with procedures, treating emergencies, keeping our patients safe, providing nutrition and support, and administering medications to mention a few . But it takes more than just competent team members to make a great hospital. To really care for our patients and their families, it also takes a great sense of humanity.
By keeping our patients and their families at the center of everything we do, we can transform the way we deliver healthcare. Jupiter Medical Center is embarking on a cultural change within our organization to empower our team members – both clinical and nonclinical – to make the best decisions and provide the best care for our patients.
Through Relationship-Based Care, a nationwide philosophy, we are striving to improve team member and physician satisfaction, improve patient and family satisfaction and loyalty, increase recruitment and retention, and improve quality and patient safety. But most of all, we are striving to make the work of our team members meaningful; focusing on the ways each patient interaction directly and significantly impacts our patients and their families.
It doesn’t stop with nurses, either. Every action of every team member in our organization has an impact on our patients and their families. A simple smile. Engaging with them. Listening. Being sympathetic. Taking a couple extra minutes to make sure they understand what is happening. Making sure they are comfortable. Just being helpful. Every little encounter makes a difference, as insignificant as it may seem. To the patient, it means a lot.
While caring for our patients and their families is important, so is caring for ourselves and each other. When we take care of the ones caring for our patients, we are able to provide the best possible care for our patients, those who come to us sick and vulnerable and in need. If you take care of yourself and your team members, you can really care for your patients. Through this simple philosophy, we are reaffirming our commitment to our patients and their families.
This philosophy starts from the top, with our senior management team, board of trustees and physicians backing this transformation process. They have significantly invested in implementing this program by training a key group of team members, who will then train our 1,500 clinical and nonclinical staff in three-day workshops for the next few years. This is an ongoing process, and we will continue to provide ongoing training and education to our team members even after they have completed the initial training.
We are implementing this philosophy because we believe that:
• Relationships between patients, families and caregivers are at the center of care delivery
• Everyone has a valuable contribution to make
• Relationship-Based Care creates a healthy, caring work environment
• Relationship-Based Care is organized around the needs and priorities of our patients and their families
• Knowledge of self and self-care are fundamental requirements for developing quality, healthy intrapersonal relationships
• Relationship-Based Care creates and sustains an organizational culture that enables the provision of quality and safe care to our patients and their families.
The end result will be life-changing – both for our team members, and for our patients and families. We hope to reignite the spirit of caring, reminding our team members of their purpose in this organization, and how their every action affects our patient outcomes. We’ll create a culture of caring, where it’s evident just by walking through the front door of our hospital. We care for each other, and we care about our patients.
