NOVEMBER 2024LIFE SCIENCES REVIEW9I walked down the hall expecting people to greet me with a smile, I saw the top of their heads as they hurried along, eyes glued to their phones. Instead of making eye Contact with warm hellos, I started to feel awkward staring at people expecting to share hellos or greetings. When I show up at appointments, the receptionist, busy talking on the phone, takes what feels like forever to ask me to wait one moment. Sometimes, you stand there until they're ready to acknowledge you. I decided that I was going to stand for change by being an example. I joined Emory Healthcare as a consultant and vowed to exercise compassion in action. Through monthly micro-learnings, we'd put out small behaviors for each person to practice, from smiling, saying hello, and sharing stories of how our team goes above and beyond. One year later, I was promoted to sr. manager for patient experience. In addition to working with our Winship Cancer Center, ambulatory surgery center, human genetics, and interventional radiology, I now have the opportunity to manage guest and volunteer services. Through our impact, we can live in the moment and help those in need. Our support varies from wayfinding, as patients will experience anxiety trying to navigate to their appointments if they are late, to our volunteers helping out in various areas, such as rounding to gather patient feedback and offer service recovery. My goal is to spread and represent love. Compassion in action shows up as taking the time to put a smile on a patient's face if they're down, extending kindness by going above and beyond, and teaching my divisions to practice behaviors such as AIDET+H (acknowledge, introduce, duration, explanation, thank you, and handoff) and conducting pop-up surveys to ensure the behaviors are being practiced. It's not enough to talk about showing compassion to our patients; we also must remember that practice starts with how we treat each other, our colleagues, family, and friends. We tell staff, `Treat people how you want to be treated.' However, with today's vast technology and love of likes, I encourage you not only to treat people the way you'd want to be treated but also to show compassion as if your social media followers are watching you. With every 24 hours that we have to serve, especially in the healthcare capacity, in moments where you are sharing space and time with someone in need or not, would you get a like, follow, or subscribe, or would you get unfollowed? It is not enough to send out reminders to your team to display compassion. It is not enough to talk about it during daily huddles. We must act it out in all we do until the behavior becomes contagious. If you're a provider, practice habits such as sitting at eye level with your patients and starting the conversation by asking how their weekend was. If you're an administrator, check in randomly with your teams, bring in breakfast, and eat with them just because, and if you're walking in the hallway and passing someone, lift your head and say hello; it's free. If you're a provider, practice habits such as sitting at eye level with your patients and starting the conversation by asking how their weekend was
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