City Hospital Case Study Summary

Case Summary: City Hospital is one five major hospitals in the heart of a large midwestern city. The hospital recently built an addition for treating famous athletes and musicians, as well as, company executives. City Hospital operates with 1,200 hospital beds and 4,500 employees, including about 40 patient escorts. Patient escorts are employees who use a wheelchair to bring discharging patients, and their belongings, from their hospital room to the front entrance. The escorts are the last hospital employee patients see as they leave so the position is important. Of the approximate 40 escorts, ¾ men and ¼ women, most are high school graduates, with some working to cover college expenses. The hospital has to replace 50% of the escorts annually; …show more content…
Some of the escorts hired during the last two years have been exhibiting poor attitudes and reckless behavior. These performance problems need to be spotted before they get out of hand. The hospital management and staff are not reinforcing the culture they desire their escorts to adapt to. There has been consistent failure by City Hospital, in regards, to getting the right people to fill the escort position. Since the hospital routinely replaces half their escort staff annually, the escort complaints can only grow and produce a negative image of City Hospital in the …show more content…
This is done by having new hires interact with patients, in the presence of their trainer. The trainer needs to observe how the escorts create a rapport with patients so that corrections can be made early on. Prohibit patient swapping so that escorts will learn to work with who they are assigned and not who they prefer. The escorts must introduce themselves and point out their name tag to the patients so that they know who their escorts are. The administration needs to implement quarterly escort meetings held by HR personnel, in which, each escort attending tell a positive or touching story about a patient they