Healthcare Employee Satisfaction

In a previous article, we discussed many of the benefits of caring about employee satisfaction in the healthcare industry. Even though there is some evidence that good bedside manner has no effect on patient health, the healthcare industry will benefit in other ways, including: Residual Benefits – Patients will be less likely to avoid seeking medical attention when they need it. Customer Satisfaction – Word of mouth marketing and repeat patient care is important for the success of the hospital.

Employee Retention – Great nurses are leaving many of the nation’s hospitals in favor of other work. Employee satisfaction in hospitals and healthcare is still important, even if good bedside manner truly doesn’t have any measurable effects on patient health.

In addition, all of this ignores the possible benefits of increased productivity, etc., which are often hard to measure in the healthcare system. Yet there is another possible benefit to improving employee satisfaction as well – that benefit is the idea that an employee that is satisfied, focused, and loves their job will probably be less likely to commit errors which could lead to not only a patient’s ill health, but also lawsuits to the hospital that may cause serious revenue problems for the company. Some studies have shown that every single day you are in a hospital you are subjected to a hospital error.

Most of these errors have no effect, but the astounding number of errors that occur regularly within a hospital is enough to cause some serious worry. One wonders, then, what affect this has on both patient health and hospital lawsuits. Are doctors and nurses less likely to make errors when they enjoy their job? Are the best nurses and doctors leaving because they aren’t satisfied? While there is no way to know for certain, preventable medical errors are one of the primary causes of financial problems with hospitals, as fewer insurance companies are willing to cover the costs of these patient accidents.

Focusing on employee satisfaction may help reduce these errors. It may focus their work better so that they make fewer errors, but even in the off chance it has no effect, at the very least it will make it more likely that the hospital will be able to retain its best employees. That alone should be enough to motivate those in healthcare to focus on employee satisfaction more often.

Related Blog Part 1