HFMA VIEWS

A number of stories in the news this week focused attention on the human factor in health care, specifically the role of nurses in improving patient satisfaction and the difficulties a healthcare organization can face in recruiting and retaining a talented nursing staff if it does not make accommodations than enable nurses to achieve a desired work-life balance.

These stories remind us that in a world increasingly dominated by technology, the human factor remains an essential component in our daily lives and in the business of health care. Technology cannot address the concerns of an anxious patient, nor can it satisfy a dissatisfied staff member who is seeking flexibility in a work schedule. These situations require conversation, negotiation, and compromise--distinctly human capabilities.

The human factor in health care is also explored in Reflections on Doctors: Nurses’ Stories About Physicians and Surgeons, a new book that was reviewed in the Health section of The New York Times on October 28. Abigail Zuger, a doctor who wrote the review, noted that “in our transparency-seeking, report-card-issuing, memoir-happy climate, not much about medicine goes unexamined these days.” An exception is the relationship between doctors and nurses, “an aspect that used to be at the center of attention.” Among other observations, Zuger comments that “nursing is intensely reality-based; medicine, often, not so much.”

As this week’s study of nurses’ impact on patient satisfaction suggests, attention to the reality of what people are experiencing within our healthcare system can go a long way toward improving their experience of it.