Once there were three bricklayers. Each one of them was asked what he was doing. The first man answered gruffly, “I’m laying bricks.'” The second man replied, “I’m putting up a wall.” The third man said enthusiastically and with pride, “I’m building a cathedral.” –Unknown

In many ways, it is not so much what we do, but the vision and attitude we bring to what we do that makes the biggest difference in the quality of our lives and our experiences.

To the cathedral builder in this little parable, each brick is more than just a brick; it is an element, an aspect of a larger experience—in this case, the cathedral experience. Change the color, texture, size or position of the brick and the cathedral will be different. He pays attention to each brick, knowing it matters.

Creating a medical practice is no different. Each aspect of a practice, each “brick,” really matters. The awareness with which each person engages in his or her role has an impact. And, the resulting experience is far more than the sum of its parts—for your patients, for your staff, and also for you.

Medical Clinic or Temple of Healing?

In your practice, do you feel like you’re laying bricks, or like you’re creating a sacred healing space? If you’re one of the 60% of doctors who say they would not recommend medicine as a career, you probably feel like an indentured servant laying bricks. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The key to creating an effective patient experience is to hold a vision that reaches below the surface. Neuroscience tells us that we absorb about 20 million bits of data per second, yet we are only conscious of 11 bits; 95% of what we take in is processed below conscious awareness. To give patients a nurturing, healing experience, we need to create nurturing, compassionate input below their conscious radar.

As Bruce Lipton, PhD, author of The Biology of Belief says: “It’s the environment, stupid.” Our environment shapes our beliefs and our beliefs influence our biology. Our cells are programmable, downloading information from the environment. All this information creates our belief effects. Change the environment and you change the experience. Change the experience, and you change beliefs and biology.

According to Dr. Lipton, the “treatment” is only a small part of what a patient receives in a medical encounter. From this perspective, it can be interesting to ask yourself what, besides specific medical treatments, is your practice delivering, and how are these not-so-obvious factors delivered?

Don’t Do More, Do Differently

Here’s the thing: you’re already creating a patient experience, whether it is consciously planned, haphazard, or simply the result of habit. Every decision, action, and attitude from you and your staff influences your patients, sending messages to them, below their conscious awareness.

Creating an experience with intention isn’t something extra to add to an already over-booked day. It’s about engaging in what you’re doing with a new vision—a vision of creating a healing garden, a temple of healing.

A patient experience, or really any experience, is a combination of people (attitudes and actions), processes (how things work), and the sensory environment. The goal is to design and align all three to create and reinforce a common vision.

Humans always respond to all situations emotionally first. The rational mind doesn’t catch up until six seconds later. No wonder we are stumped when people don’t seem to act rationally. “Rational” satisfaction isn’t the determining factor in our behavior: what matters is how we feel. Value and quality are in the hearts of the patients, determined by how they feel.

The Emotional Target

Start by determining how patients want to feel when they are at your clinic. Diving into research about healing, we uncover five core feelings that support healing: feeling comfortable, understood, connected, strengthened and renewed.

The positive feelings you opt to focus on (hopefully with some input from staff, patients or both) become your “North Star” for everything you do. Awareness of these feelings will now guide the decisions, actions and attitudes of yourself and your staff. This is what infuses new meaning into everyday actions, so you’re building a cathedral, not just laying bricks.

Let’s explore “feeling comfortable.” If you’re aiming to create a sense of comfort for patients, here are a few examples of how everyday things take on new meaning, and changes naturally evolve:

• Look at your intake paperwork process through the eyes of the patient. Is there a physically comfortable place for patients to complete the intake forms? Are the questions worded in a way that people feel emotionally comfortable providing all the information you need to be an effective clinician? Is your paperwork so long that patients get bored or overloaded? A tell-tale sign is a tendency toward clipped, less thoughtful answers toward the end.
• When you’re buying facial tissue, do you select the less-expensive scratchy kind or the cushy 3-ply version? Knowing you’re aiming for comfort makes this an easy decision. Yes, even the tissues are sending a message.
• When you’re examining a patient lying on the table, do you find yourself making suggestions about things for him/her to do at home? Many doctors do. But it’s actually not very helpful. Why? Because it obliges the patient to try and remember what you said and make a note of it later. Further, patients pay more heed to things you tell them when they’re sitting up, face to face with you. Something said casually when they’re lying down does not register as important.

Discuss what “comfortable” means with your entire staff. Consider the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual components of comfort. Take time to focus on one aspect of what happens in the office, and try to identify when patients don’t seem comfortable, and when they do. Brainstorm about what can be done differently. Together, you’ll find numerous ways to make small changes. It always helps to ask your patients for input!

Use the same process to look at the other core feelings that engender healing (i.e., feeling understood, strengthened, connected & renewed).

Metaphor & Medicine

This article began with a metaphor: bricklayers building cathedrals. Words alone rarely capture the meaning of what we’re experiencing or thinking, so we turn to metaphors. By understanding the deep metaphors associated with healing and aligning your experience to support them, patients feel that you understand their needs.

One of the metaphors for wellness is movement. Even OnStar®, GM’s car security system, uses this, with its, “Can you move?” line. We typically consider movement to be physical, but it can also be emotional, mental or spiritual. For a patient, moving from the “unknown” to the “known” (or vice versa) is a big movement, though much of it may seem routine to you as a practitioner. By recognizing that people move through a range of emotions that come up around illness, you help your patients feel understood. This, in and of its self, can be quite healing.

There are many ways to look at movement as you work with patients:

• Perhaps you sense a patient is resistant to a lifestyle change you’re suggesting. Talk about what that movement means to them. Maybe they naturally move in small steps. If you tailor your communication to create comfort for each patient, you can work together to find a way to “move” toward new habits.
• Journaling is a great tool to help patients identify their own movement patterns, and to bring what’s happening to their conscious awareness. Are they having Oprah “ah ha” moments? This is movement. Did they feel something different today, than yesterday? This is movement. Do they have a new lens to put perspective on their lives and their health challenges? This is HUGE movement. Whenever these steps occur for a given patient, take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate that with them. It’s very important.
• Some patients will appreciate getting an outline of what will be done during an appointment, test process, or treatment—especially if it is a fairly complex multi-step process. In a sense, you’re tracing out the steps of the movement of that appointment. You can then use this to show the patient where s/he is at any point along the way, and what can be expected at each step.

Over the next week, look for movement in all you do. Notice what happens as you stand in line in the grocery store or how your child quickly moves through a range of emotions. You’ll start seeing movement and lack of movement in many places. It will give you ideas you can put to good use in your clinic.

What Are You Really Doing?

Just as your patients are on a healing journey, you and your entire staff are also on a journey to create the optimal patient experience. Nothing has to be set in stone. The “bricks” that make up your clinic experience can be shaped, painted and moved. You can evolve and adjust things as you get feedback from your patients, and as you observe how things work.

Creating an environment that communicates compassion, support, and empowerment is about aligning the many aspects of the patient experience with those goals—especially the subtle aspects of the environment that register below patients’ conscious awareness.

Transformation (that’s another healing metaphor) comes when we have a new view of ourselves, and our roles in life. Is the person at your front desk just answering the phone and handing out forms or offering warmth and comfort to someone who is harried, anxious and fearful? Is your office manager merely administering the practice or setting the stage for healing encounters? Are you “providing” treatments, or facilitating the miracle of healing and transformation?

Ideally, you want everyone in your office, regardless of their specific tasks to respond with, “I’m helping people heal,” when someone asks, “So, what do you do?”

If you set this as your goal, and work diligently but joyfully toward it, your patients will feel the difference, and your practice will benefit, both clinically and fiscally. Happy patients refer their family and friends. They’ll return when necessary, and they will actively demonstrate their appreciation.

Deb Andelt is co-founder of Experience In Motion, a customer experience tools company based in Scottsdale, AZ. She is the author and co-creator of The Toolkit to Empower Healing and the associated workshop: Creating Healing Experiences That Work, filled with tools for practitioners to equip each person to be an agent of healing. Her personal experiences with practitioners on her own healing journey from decay to vitality provides her with a unique understanding that it’s more than the “treatment,” it’s the total experience that matters. deb@experienceinmotion.net, (480) 945-7035