Lived Experience Leader, Storyteller, Speaker, Thinker, Deep Feeler, and Advocate. Specialising in Relational Engagement Design when Partnering with Health Consumers
In the course of my work, I often hear consumers ask why is it so hard for clinicians and health services to act like they care? After all, they’re caring professions in a caring industry - right? Maybe. But not if they aren’t supported to be. Health system targets that focus on speed, volume of activity, risk aversion are not conducive to building relationships and connections. They aren’t systems that embody value for relationships and connections. Heath systems that hand such targets and measures down to frontline clinical staff and middle tier management, hand down a level of performance pressure that is brilliant for creating stress, disempowerment, burnout, and frustration, but not remotely brilliant for fostering permission to pause, take a few moments and connect with a patient. I imagine the contrary infact. I imagine it makes a patient and their family’s need to talk and understand, seem like a pain in the neck. Not always, not for all, but, I imagine definitely for some. I wonder too how professional boundaries, privacy policies, risk aversion, can do anything other than imply it is better to keep consumers and their families slightly at arm’s length. I know as a peer worker, privacy was often the reason cited for not including family and loved ones in decision making. Seems to me that for human centred care to flourish, human centred care has to be modelled by all spheres and tiers of the organisation. From recruitment to leadership, policy to performance. By genuinely caring about, and listening to STAFF experience. By reading the signals that attrition rates, and impossible-to-fill position vacancies tell us. Human centred care cannot exist on a foundation that fuels fear and stress; that values the transactional over the relational. It just can’t. I’m really interested in Trauma Informed Care. I’m a total novice in that space but have read enough to understand that health care systems can resolve or exacerbate trauma related issues. “Trying to implement trauma-specific clinical practices without first implementing trauma-informed culture change is like throwing seeds on dry land”, said Sandra Bloom MD. Seems to me it is the exact same with human-centred care isn’t it? Or am I missing something?
Leanne Wells
7mo
I like your reflections Liz Newton. They highlight for me just how important the workforce satisfaction aim of the quintuple aim of healthcare is. Our health care providers are often as confounded by the system as patients are. Like in any workplace, a happy, motivated, supported workforce that is not stretched and stressed is going to serve any system and its beneficiaries better - in this case health care and patients.
Delliah Shaffer
7mo
Humans need space and time to care. Caring and gentleness and kindness are virtues, and like any goal in life, people need to focus their attention on these, to be able to ‘achieve’ these. What you focus attention on, becomes your intention and manifests itself, what you don’t focus on, doesn’t manifest. The workforce and organisational systems at play in today’s world, force human attention *away* from these virtues, and also *away* from basic self-care habits like drinking 3L of water a day, cooking a few really health and yummy meals a week, daily movement and relaxation like walking, exercise, swimming in rock pools or praying/meditating/yoga. All these habits go by the wayside if human beings are too busy, as does proper breathing. Health care workplaces, like most organisations, fill humans up with so many demands and less important things to pay attention to (because what is more important than basic preventive health habits and virtues and peacefulness?). This is common sense that the staff, who went into the professions to care for people, don’t have space or time for true caring due to these standard workforce and organisational systems at play today. It is a society-wide lack of time & emotional freedom.
Clare Mullen
7mo
I very much agree Liz Newton. It's why I'm so focused on getting a consumer perspective into every level of decision making. Because consumer reps know that one of their roles is to bring the human into the room. I think all of us as consumer/patient reps (I love your role description of Patient Partner btw) have to work hard to hold that ground - especially when we're in rooms where the prevailing culture is focused on system flow and KPIs. Healing and healthcare are relational - we must defend this as "the system" goes through its current wave of transformation. Great post. Thanks.
Liz Newton excellent points! Staff in our healthcare system don’t come to work intending to create negative experiences. We need to consider what in our system drives such outcomes.
Murtza Ali
7mo
Thank you Liz Newton for your cogent call to action for healthcare systems to prioritize compassion over metrics. You have eloquently highlighted the tension between healthcare targets and human-centered care, emphasizing how performance pressure can hinder genuine connections with patients
Edwina Sheppard
7mo
NAILED IT!
Consultant | Director | Advocate | Mum
7moGreat reflections, Liz, thanks for sharing! Crudely put, happy staff = happy patients = happy staff. I also think this is a wider systems issue that speaks to our culture of wanting the impossible: high quality care that is timely/ accessible and affordable. This creates expectations and KPIs that cannot reasonably be met but rather than being honest about that, we just push harder and harder, creating burnout. I also think most patients have work and family responsibilities, which mean they often prioritise time as most important. They will complain the longer they have to wait and get anxious about longer and repeat appointments given they cost more (in primary care and the private system). The less time you spend with someone, the less chance you have to develop a relationship, shared understanding and decision-making. In the moment when there’s pressure to get back to work or look after kids, you may rush a consultation. It’s only in retrospect you appreciate the value of that interaction in establishing care and intent to help. Really we need employers to also value and accept the time it takes to deliver quality care, not just service providers.