In the Cinema City complex in Jerusalem, Shaare Zedek Medical Center held a special event to mark the launch of its “Improve the Patient Experience” project, the Health Ministry’s 2017 flagship initiative. The aim is to improve service for the patient population.
Shaare Zedek has set the standard and is working to improve the patient experience at all levels of the organization – from senior managers, through unit heads to the teams trained in service provision. Our training in the field includes developing communication skills, a service culture and ways to generate positive dialogue with patients and their families. Structuring an ongoing, dynamic dialogue on the topic of patient experience contributes and will contribute to deepening trust and cooperation between patients and treatment providers.
The patient’s experience reflects the way in which a person perceives all of his or her interactions with the health system along the treatment continuum. This experience is influenced by the meetings between treatment provider and patient, from the patient’s expectations of the health system and from the organizational culture of each of the frameworks with which the patient comes into contact.
Defining standards and benchmarks for patient experience serves as a springboard for improving communication between patients and treatment providers and advances quality and safety in the health system.
Among the topics that we at Shaare Zedek aim to improve: transparency and presenting the patient – at our initiative – with complete, updated, understandable and accessible information, speedy responses to requests, showing respect, decency and empathy towards the patient, adapting treatment or experiences to the unique needs of each patient, emotional support, involving the patient’s family or other significant carer, empowering the patient, improving patient-service provider communication, the patient’s physical comfort, making the treatment accessible, and more.
