Hope Brown joins the Healthcare Experience Matters Podcast, created by our Healthcare Experience Foundation partners, this week to share her thoughts on what it takes to advance the patient experience in pediatric care.
On today’s discussion, we learn about some key challenges that exist when it comes to providing excellent patient experiences for children.
Hope currently serves as Director of Patient Experience with Children’s Hospital and Medical Center – Omaha in Nebraska. Believe it or not, we have never had an episode dedicated entirely to the patient experience in pediatric care—and we could not have landed a better guest than Hope for today’s enlightening discussion!
Our Podcast Director, Casey Callanan, asks Hope if there is anything special to pay attention to when it comes to pediatric patient experiences in the opening minutes of today’s discussion.
“There’s certainly a lot of commonalities between (children and adult care),” she said. “At the core, it’s still about communicating to your patients and their family members how much you really, truly care about them and how you’re going to walk alongside them in their healthcare journey.”
When it comes to some of the major challenges, Hope reminds us that in pediatric care, the patient experience is very intertwined with the parent’s experience. This can add to the complexity of delivering consistently excellent patient experiences.
“I’m a mom myself. I have four kiddos and you know in situations where your kid’s health and potentially life is at risk, I go into that ‘mama bear’ mode,” she said.
As a mother herself, Hope tells us that it’s the love for her own family that fuels the empathy and passion she has for her everyday work at Children’s Hospital in Omaha.
“When I had the opportunity to help at a children’s hospital, somebody said to me as I was kind of making the transition, they said, there’s no better mission than a children’s hospital. And I think that’s wholly true at that moment,” she told us.
As we wrapped up this interview, Hope reminds us that it has never been more important to be grateful for the healthcare workers on the front lines.
“Thank a nurse, thank a doctor, thank a health care worker,” she said. “We had our kind of moments there where we all stood out and applauded them during COVID, but they are not feeling that as much anymore, and the work that they’re doing is just as important, if not more important, than it ever has been.”
Listen to the podcast below: