Places of Healing

By Sita Ananth

Baptist Healing Trust helps hospitals create a culture of loving care—toward employees, caregivers and patients.

Sita Ananth

When Erie Chapman walked into his first hospital executive position in 1971 after seven years as a trial attorney, he quickly noticed striking parallels between how patients and prisoners are treated. Patients are made to take off their clothes and are given a "uniform," or a gown. They are banded on their wrists and coded with a number; they have to share accommodations with a stranger; and their visiting hours are often restricted. Chapman was shocked by the humiliating and degrading experience endured by patients, and by the hospital's unconscious role in making caregivers superior to patients rather than equal.

During his 30 years as a hospital CEO, he evolved a concept that led to a book: Radical Loving Care. The concept goes beyond compassion, kindness and customer service to unconditional, loving care, which requires a core change in the organization's culture. This means not just random, thoughtful gestures but rather a continuous chain of loving care—kindness and skill from every caregiver (including leaders) to every patient and to one another. To do this, he insists, hospital leaders must "take care of the people who take care of people." Leaders, he says, are generally too isolated from first-line staff and focused on financial performance.

Since 2002, Chapman has been the founding president and CEO of the $150 million Baptist Healing Trust based in Nashville, Tenn. The trust is dedicated to improving health care services for the underserved in the state, as well as consulting with hospitals across the nation to grow the culture of loving care. The Baptist Healing Trust uses a three-step process: (1) appreciative inquiry to ascertain senior managers' commitment to engage in culture change, (2) introduction of a process to initiate change, and (3) a persistent renewal of this established culture that puts loving care at the center.

Mercy Gilbert

When Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) opened a new facility, Mercy Gilbert in Gilbert, Ariz., in 2006, the hospital was not only constructed to be a healing space physically, but its organizational culture was designed from the start to offer loving care. CEO Laurie Eberst says that it was important to build an organization—before the doors even opened—that would support CHW's philosophy of providing high-quality, compassionate care to the community it serves. Using the concepts outlined in Radical Loving Care, organizational leaders made a conscious effort to choose employees for their passion and compassion, and they helped nurture these qualities by treating them with dignity and respect.

Growing a culture of loving care has benefited the new facility. Since its opening, the hospital has doubled in size. The nursing turnover rate is half the state average (Arizona's average is 22 percent, Mercy Gilbert's 11.5 percent); employee satisfaction rates are 87 percent (CHW's organizational goal is 80 percent); the hospital is ranked eighth in performance of 42 CHW hospitals; all units are fully staffed; and there is a waiting list of RNs who want to work there.

Parrish Medical Center

Seven years ago, George Mikitarian, CEO of Parrish Medical Center in Titusville, Fla., began looking for ways he could create a healing environment in his hospital while it was building a replacement facility and joined the Center for Health Design's Pebble Project. "We could not bring an old show into a new theater," says Natalie Sellers, director of communications and service excellence. So they started looking at the healing hospital concepts developed by Chapman.

Since adopting these philosophies, Mikitarian says employee engagement has dramatically increased (Parrish has been classified a "world class employer" by Gallup); only one physician has left in the last three years; and nurse turnover is down to 7 percent from 17 percent in 2002.

As Chapman demonstrated in his work with more than 25 hospitals nationwide, building a culture of caring is not only the right thing to do, but it also generates positive and measurable returns to the organization.

Sita Ananth, M.H.A., is director of knowledge services, Optimal Healing Environments, for the Samueli Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization in Alexandria, Va. She is also a regular contributor to H&HN Weekly.

This article 1st appeared on May 25, 2009 in HHN Magazine online site.

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