Town Hall Meetings

At work we were required to attend a Town Hall Meeting, and I will have to admit I was not very excited about it. Some of my co-workers had attended and the reviews were mixed. Some of them loved it, others felt like it was a "shape up or ship out" kind of meeting. Last night I went and went with an open mind. I am blonde so the open mind is really not that difficult. We were told that we (EIRMC) needed to step up the patient experience a notch or two. We were at the bottom of the polls of patient satisfaction surveys. The government is going to use patient satisfaction as a criteria in reimbursement. This could affect jobs here at EIRMC. He even pulled the competition card and sneakily challenged us to do better to beat the local competitor in the surveys. If you know me, I don't like to lose, so that motivated me a bit.

Anyway, we learned that we were last and that we needed to do better. They showed us that if we are only giving 99% then last year we would have given 15 babies to the wrong parents, had 22 drug administration mistakes, 350 surgical instruments used that were not sterilized. We could not afford to be only 99%. We needed to be at 100%.

At the end of the meeting they showed a little video clip that is worth watching. Google "212". It is quite inspiring. I came from that meeting with a renewed attitude and it reminded me why I became a nurse. I admit that I have been quite negative at work the last couple of months and I have recommitted to my career, my workplace and my co-workers. I want to be just 1 degree more to make a difference in people's lives. Thank you Doug, Kathleen and Sandy for your dedication to our EIRMC family. Thank you for "making" me go to the Town Hall Meeting.