Believing in and recognising healthcare excellence

Citation

Jackson, S. (2001), "Believing in and recognising healthcare excellence", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 14 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2001.06214baa.001

Believing in and recognising healthcare excellence

Believing in and recognising healthcare excellence

Achieving healthcare excellence is synonymous with everyone believing in it and recognising its distinguishing features. However, both these situations are not readily found within healthcare. This view comes from providing a number of workshops to healthcare personnel whereby delegates have been asked to consider "What is healthcare excellence?" and "What are the characteristics associated with healthcare excellence?"

During a typical workshop delegates find answering the two questions challenging, especially the first one because teams want to devise an all-encompassing statement that reflects healthcare excellence. Hence they are soon advised to move on to the second question because developing an inclusive statement is impossible without identifying the associated characteristics first. It was during one of these workshops that a most significant event occurred leaving me with such a profound message that I had to share it with you in an effort to positively influence all our efforts towards healthcare excellence.

In essence one of the groups of healthcare personnel was having difficulty identifying characteristics associated with healthcare excellence. There was a lengthy silence and many visible creases amongst the delegates' foreheads. Then one of the team members suggested thinking about the business environment rather than the healthcare environment in order to come up with the characteristics of excellence. Everyone enthusiastically agreed with the idea. However, for me, a very clear message emerged. All the team members felt that there were too few, if not an absence of, healthcare excellence examples for them to determine its associated characteristics. Alternatively the team felt there were more examples of excellence features within the commercial sector. Therefore switching their thinking to the business environment would make the groupwork easier, a decision that was proven to be accurate.

For instance, the switch was effective in that the brainstorming exercise was energised, and dynamic suggestions were put forward. Characteristics like happy customers, happy staff, teamwork, everyone working towards a vision, setting standards, measuring performance, making improvements, customers (patients) receiving the treatment they wanted, users needs and desires being identified and efforts made to meet them, staff views being identified and where possible met, were put forward. However, I found it very disturbing that the group members did not readily recognise that there were many such examples within the healthcare environment.

Especially when setting healthcare standards has been undertaken for at least 20 years and all people working within healthcare do their best to meet the needs and desires of patients and their carers. There are lots of examples of when small but very effective actions like holding someone's hand, giving timely reassurances and making sure all family members' needs are attended to seem to far exceed the concept of excellence. Measuring performance and improving processes for the benefit of customers (patients) has been an ongoing endeavour for quite some time. Furthermore, a number of these improvements have been captured by this journal for the last fourteen years. Nevertheless, it can be accepted that there is a feeling amongst the healthcare fraternity that delivering excellence is achieved at the expense of its people rather than with its people, a feature that is not associated with organisational excellence.

A further message that emerged from the groupwork was the lack of belief that healthcare excellence could actually be realised. There was a common understanding amongst the group, made evident through body language, raised eyebrows and wry smiles, that healthcare excellence was an ideal concept but not one that could be transferred into the real world. Moreover, delegates' eyes "lit up" at the thought that all patients could be "happy" with the care they received, which indicated that everyone wanted healthcare excellence but did not really feel it could be attained. Personal experience would suggest that the reaction of this group was no different than it had been from many other such groups of people working within healthcare.

Given this to be the case the very people responsible for securing healthcare excellence could be the very people preventing its occurrence. Especially when, before embarking upon the road towards excellence, drivers and other contributors need to believe in their overall direction as, without that belief, there is no point taking the first step. Similarly, gurus of quality suggest that having a view that excellence cannot be attained is a major contributor towards not attaining it. Therefore if someone says they will not achieve something, they will not achieve it. Conversely if people believe that excellence can be attained, they will make great strides towards achieving it, as believing in it is synonymous with overcoming hurdles previously thought impossible. However, simply believing does not imply that the journey towards excellence is easy; rather, what emerges is a can-do attitude that results in creativity energy, and relentless efforts towards the overall goal. It is this attitude that will help all of us working within the field to make great strides in the healthcare excellence journey.

So, next time someone asks you about the characteristics associated with healthcare excellence, be ready to inundate them with real life examples of the times you made a difference. You may also like to share with them evidence from the literature of the times when others have made a difference, some of which are contained within the International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance. Last, you may like to share your positive experiences more widely by submitting articles to the journal so that everyone can read about the positive examples of healthcare excellence and believe in the vision, thereby being more motivated to reach the goal of happy customers, staff and stakeholders. Healthcare excellence can be achieved we just need to believe in it and recognise it to realise it.

Sue Jackson