A Culture of Service. My Perspective

My company really takes our mission seriously, and spends a tremendous amount of time and effort nurturing a culture which enables that mission. We serve clients who provide medical treatment to homebound patients as well as end of life care in the home.

It’s one of the most noble, unknown and underappreciated jobs in healthcare. Far from how the TV show ER depicts the glamourous side of working in a hospital, or profiling the doctor who saves the day, Home health nurses and care providers face a daily grind of travelling to a patient’s home and providing care that they otherwise wouldn’t receive. Many times, its not just a medical condition they are treating, but also dealing with the underlying reasons of why a patient is homebound in the first place.

So when I was asked to define what culture of service means to me, I couldn’t help but think of the clinicians we serve and in turn the patients they serve.

What that means to us, is that the perspective of the clinician and the patient are central to everything we do and every decision we make. Although we are one step removed from their day to day, the service that we provide, the solutions that we create, the challenges we solve are at their core attempting to make their job just a little bit easier, a little bit less stressful, so they can spend an extra 10 minutes with our parents, grandparents, our friends, or the ones we care about the most.

Serving them literally sends a spark of electricity through the office. We had the fortunate pleasure to host one of our clients in the office for ongoing education and had the opportunity to listen to her perspective about some of the things about her business that she was passionate about. She recalled a story about a 16-year girl who due to terminal cancer was admitted to her agency as a hospice patient. She went on to describe the strength of the girl and how the girl was not at all concerned with the end of her own life, but only about the well-being of her brother, mother and father after she passed. Our client was there at the end caring for the girl, and then the girl’s family. Hearing the passion of our client, how she described serving patients such as the terminally ill girl is what got her up every day. It had a profound impact on the entire office.

Its almost selfish to take pride in serving an individual like that.

So back to my opening sentence: my company really takes our mission seriously. Its not a mandate. Its not in the employee handbook. It’s not a slogan. By creating opportunities for the individuals in our company to see how we affect our clients and their patient’s lives, by constantly challenging ourselves to put the patient first, to think about the daily challenges of our clinicians, a culture of service is just the natural result.

It’s one of the most humbling and rewarding opportunities of my professional career to participate and contribute to a culture of serve which enables me to serve those that take care of the least capable among us.