5 Solutions for Better Rapport With Hospital Frontline Staff Written by Bob Herman | January 16, 2013 Social

Sharing Hospital leaders must ensure their frontline staff members are devoted to advancing the organization's mission, but getting from point A to point B is not always easy, according to an infographic from The Advisory Board Company. Here are five ways hospital executives can address challenges associated with frontline staff relations. 1. Problem: Employees don't know where the hospital is headed. Solution: Communicate organizational priorities. Hospital administrations must have their frontline staffs focused on small, actionable objectives through consistent outreach and education sessions. 2. Problem: Current evaluations don't incorporate meaningful goals. Solution: Formalize organizational goals. Incorporating staff responsibilities such as patient wait times, test result accuracy and supply expenses into performance evaluations can increase the scope of a staff member's goals. 3. Problem: Employees don't feel rewarded for going above and beyond. Solution: Don't overlook effective sources of incentives. Cash bonuses and salary increases are not the only types of effective incentives. The Advisory Board also found praise and attention from leaders is extremely effective for roughly 63 to 67 percent of frontline staff members. 4. Problem: Nurses are mostly silent about poor teamwork. Solution: Encourage peer feedback. Calling out poor peer behavior as it occurs and having formal feedback time can increase accountability. 5. Problem: Employees struggle to see how they contribute to the hospital at large. Solution: Illustrate the impact of individual staff performance. Frontline clinical staff like nurses can benefit from hearing personal testimony from patients, but frontline nonclinical staff can also benefit from hearing how they contribute to clinical employees' roles.

Reaction: Being a student nurse in the emergency department, this article is of great use because it can help nurses to deal with patients coming in the hospital because the emergency department nurses and personnel are the frontliners of the hospital, it is within their judgement if they will admit the client for hospitalization or either treat the client as an out-patient but also, the nurses should also communicate effectively as it is the key to ensure the clients that they are well taken care of, and will relieve any anxiety they may face. So it is of great use to be an effective communicator in the field. With communication it will help the nurse to assess the client and also help the patients be educated with their chief complaints. This will reduce the mortality rate that happens within the stay of clients and also help the nurse to ensure quality of care that they provide to clients in the ER.