Patient Escorts for City Hospital

¶ … Patient Escorts for City Hospital

One of the crucial, more public, jobs for the hospital is the patient escort. Although very public, the job requires little in the way of intellectual acumen; it is simply to escort patients from one location to another in the hospital, or, primarily from the hospital discharge to their car or transportation. This position, though, has experienced a 25% turnover rate and recently been the focus of a number of complaints that tarnish the image of the hospital. City Hospital knows it must revamp its hiring procedure for this position, but is unsure how to do so.

Background- Over the past few years, City Hospital has become one of the leading Midwestern hospitals and built a special addition for treating celebrities, well-known professionals, and other high-profile cases. Because the hospital has invested so much money in its image, it is important that the individuals that interact with the public must be very professional. Typically, escorts are hired from previous volunteers, high school graduates, or students who go to school afternoons/evenings. The pay is good, hours short, the work is easy, and it requires few skills.

Analysis -- the issues with the patient escorts may be broken down into three major areas: 1) Job specifications, 2) Hiring procedures, and 3) Training and feedback, performance evaluation. In essence, people are being hired out of a pool for a position without specific requirements:

Job Specifications -- Patient escorts are hired out of a pool; they must pass a brief interview from HR and then the Escort Supervisor. The majority of these applicants hear about the job and are recommended because they have relatives or friends already working at the hospital. There was no formal listing of specific qualifications for the position listed, but the Chief Supervisor of Patient Escorts noted that the present application is void of any truly useful information on how an application would perform this specific job.

Hiring Procedures -- Hiring is done based on few references, and little attempt to ascertain whether the applicant works well with others, has true empathy for the infirm or ill, or the ability to handle certain types of stress.

Training and Evaluation -- All new hires go through a brief orientation; more designed to give them an overview of the position, the hospital's policies, benefits, etc. New employees are told that the hospital's image in the community is of paramount importance. After orientation, employees are trained on the specific job by their supervisor, and then allowed to escort patients. No regular observation, feedback, follow-up training, or evaluation was mentioned. Also, because of the nature of the position, the new employee is very much on their own with the patient; no direct observation is regularly possible.

Recommendations -- Clearly, the major issue is that the people being hired for the job of Patient Escort are not necessarily the right "fit" for the job; but appreciate the pay, hours and flexibility of the position. It is also likely that once trained, many of these individuals lose focus on the key importance of their role -- possibly being distracted by homework, school, families, or other life issues. This type of individual did not take the job of Patient Escort because of a true overriding need to help others, true empathy, but because of the convenience of the position.

Job Specifications -- Hiring Procedures -- First, the position description should be rewritten. It should emphasize personality and characteristics that focus on empathy, kindness and be very clear about what is expected. This job does not require a college student, or even a High-School graduate (except perhaps for Hospital procedures). It requires someone who has care capacity and is overwhelmingly cheerful, kind, and truly likes people. Often, this is not a characteristic of the young, or the upwardly mobile. The personnel director might check with some of the local social service agencies to see if there are individuals who are on assistance now, but have the personality for this job, while perhaps not having skills for a more technical job. In all cases hiring procedures need to be reevaluated for this specific job.

Hiring Procedures -- at the very least, a Meyers-Briggs test could easily be administered, which would at least guide HR in the basic tenets of emotion and empathy (myersbriggsreports.com). There are also several tests for empathy available online (noanxiety.com), and several resources that can help a hiring manager get to the heart of the right person for this position. In fact, it is the Supervisor of Patient Escorts that should participate in this process. Certainly, more emphasis in the interviewing process should be on tangible examples of actual service and empathy for people; those characteristics being the prime hiring delineator.