Last Updated May 2013
Many hospitals try to improve customer service by having customer service classes. They say that patients are happier when nurses and respiratory therapists are happier. But I like to think that common sense says that customer service classes just add to the stack of things we have to do and are more likely to only make us more unhappy.
It's true. If possible, do the following ways to make your staff happier:
Surely you may not have control over the above, so the following alone may work just fine:
- Create protocols.
- Encourage nurses to call respiratory therapists for their opinion, instead of ordering them to do something.
- Encourage nurses to call RT for dyspneic patients prior to calling doctor.
- Encourage doctors to respect RTs, and understand that we are well-educated and capable.
- Back us up when things go wrong.
- Smile when we are around.
Don't just hoard us when we get to work with a list of demands and things to do, and things we did wrong the last time we worked.
- Let us know what we did right.
- Compliment us.
- Talk to us as people as opposed to just robots doing a task.
- Encourage doctors to treat us as health care professionals instead of techs.
- Treat us with respect and dignity, the same way you treat physicians.
There you have it. Honestly, a simple compliment may work very well to create a smile on an RTs face. This, in turn, may improve customer service satisfaction in the hospital. So don't throw the ball on us, it's a team process that keeps customers happy.
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About the Author: Rick Frea is a licensed and Registered Respiratory Therapist and author of the Respiratory Therapy Cave. He provides some wonderful content for those in the profession of respiratory therapy, or those seeking to learn more about the profession.