Achieving Patient (aka Customer) Experience Excellence

105

Chapter 10

Get Help to Be

Independent

Rhonda: Fish: to give is OK; to teach how is forever.

On the plane to London, I was thinking about the last three

years. e harder you work for something, the more you appre-

ciate it. I had enjoyed success throughout my career, and I feel

Ihad worked hard. I learned so many lessons from this hospital.

I often nd it amusing that I thought I was coming here to teach

them a thing or two, but they taught me multitudes of things.

Ilearned there is a huge dierence between working hard and challenging work.

My rst day at this hospital, one of my peers asked me what made me qualied to

work here. I did not pay her much mind at the time, but I really started to think

about the answers to that question.

In the years prior to coming to Community General, I had the opportunity to

work with a consulting group. Any time I had worked with consultants before, it

was not such a good experience. I thought consultants were people who came in

and told you what to do and “got out of Dodge” before they could be blamed for

the lack of sustained results. e last group of consultants I worked with was dif-

ferent, or maybe it was me who was dierent. I think before I was just looking for

the silver bullet. For example, if consultants come in because you need help with

cost containment, they can tell you where to cut costs. ere are immediate results

because you followed their actions. However, after they leave, if your behavior does

not change, the results do not last. It is like that old proverb: “If you give a man a

sh you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to sh you feed him for a lifetime.”

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