Humanizing Healthcare: Measuring Success

Measuring the Success of Humanizing Health Care

In recent years, health care organizations have been putting significant efforts into humanizing health care. But how do we measure the success of these endeavors? How do we know if our efforts are truly making a difference in both the organization and for patients? The key may lie in using a relational empathy scale.

The CARE Measure

A tool that I’ve found useful is known as the CARE Measure (Consultation and Relational Empathy). This simple yet effective measure consists of around 10 to 11 questions which ask patients to rate their experience on a scale from poor to excellent. The questions range from “Did your practitioner make you feel at ease?” to “Were they genuinely friendly?” Essentially, it assesses whether practitioners listened, were interested in their patient as an individual, tried to fully understand concerns and maintained positivity throughout consultations.

Developed in the UK but now used globally, one major advantage of this measure is its national benchmarks across general practitioners, specialty physicians, nurses and allied health professionals such as physical therapists or speech-language pathologists. These benchmarks allow us to compare our performance with industry standards easily.

Benefits Of Using A Baseline Measurement

The idea behind using such a measurement is simple: take a baseline score from your first set of patients – say for example 100 then track changes over time. This allows you not only observe improvements at an organizational level but also drill down into each clinician’s individual performance. Equally important is that each survey provides feedback directly reflecting individual patient perspectives.

Focusing On Non-Objective Measures In Healthcare

We often emphasize functional outcome measures within healthcare settings especially within my own field of physiotherapy; assessing things like shoulder lifts or hip exercises can be invaluable indicators for understanding how well we’re treating specific diagnoses or conditions. However focusing solely on these ‘objective’ measures neglects what some refer to as ‘the soft skills’ inherent within healthcare delivery; these might include attributes like patience, empathy or good communication skills which whilst harder to quantify are no less critical in providing high-quality patient-centered care.

This is where tools like relational empathy scales come into play – offering us valuable insights into areas otherwise overlooked by conventional measurements thus helping create more holistic healthcare experiences for all involved parties. So if you find yourself asking how successful has our drive towards humanizing healthcare been? consider employing something similar within your practice today!