If you've watched an episode of "Scrubs," then you know that the interns at the fictional Sacred Heart teaching hospital spend at least part of each episode doing rounds. You can see doctors doing rounds in "General Hospital," "Grey's Anatomy" and virtually any other hospital-based television show.
One of the latest trends in hospital administration is "leader rounding." In other words, administrators must emerge from their offices and conference rooms and actually interact with medical staff and patients.
Leader rounding is adopted from the business world. If you've walked into your local bank branch lately, then you may have seen the branch manager or another member of the management team standing by the door to greet customers. In a retail store, managers are required to check in periodically in different departments and to check on certain metrics while making the rounds.
National Research Corporation Canada has launched a new app to make leader rounding more effective. "Point of Care Leader Rounding," which is available for both Android and iOS devices, directs administrators to patients' rooms when patients are in need of rounding.
Also, the app prompts administrators to ask key behavioral questions about each patient's experience, delivers real-time data and reporting and pushes requests out to other departments so that patient issues are quickly resolved.
The Point of Care app, according to a statement, is designed to make patients' lives happier while allowing leaders to point out positive employee behavior. The unsaid flip side, of course, is that the app encourages leaders to be on the floor noticing negative behaviors as well.
Managers in any industry don't always enjoy interacting with employees or with clients. Management attracts many people that are analytically minded. They may do a great job of streamlining operations or culling budgets, but they don't always do a great job of motivating or interacting with actual people.
Ultimately, both healthcare and management are about people. While Point of Care can't teach social skills to hospital administrators, it can give leaders a few pointers along the way.
Edited by
Blaise McNamee
