HR Pulse - Winter 2007 - (Page 28) Hospital Employee: CostHealth Asset?Walk the Walk or Providers to Getting By Dan McCarthy, Ph.D. healthy lifestyles? This article looks at the factors that contribute to this huge and growing problem, and provides an effective solution. Human Interactions Part of the apparent irony is explained by appreciating the stress hospital employees experience at work. The very nature of their profession—caring for sick, critically injured, often dying patients— exacts a huge emotional toll. Small mistakes can cost lives. This high-wire act occurs within the demanding social milieu of sick, pained, irritable patients and their even more excitable and agitated, albeit well-meaning, family members. Family and friends, anxious and frightened, advocate vigorously for their loved ones, staying bedside 24/7 and often “pulling shifts” to oversee the medical and nursing staff. Additionally, nurses are in a difficult position, often feeling as helpless as their charges, especially in response to physicians who issue instructions without knowledge of staff schedules and roles. Nursing staff are left to coordinate physicians’ orders, including those that rely on other non-aligned departments. It can be a scheduling and communication nightmare that under serves all participants. And hospital staff can’t waste time lamenting these situations because they need to be continuously learning and adapting to ever-changing technology. Environmental Issues In addition to the emotional toll the work exacts on nurses, they must plod through the day in dangerous workplaces, virtually devoid of privacy and personal space. Events happen STAT, codes get called, patients deteriorate and beepers and cell phones ring out priorities in constant flux. All of this occurs in an aesthetically unpleasant environment with its hard floors and fluorescent lighting. “Sharps,” radiation and toxic chemicals abound, and those are just the inanimate hazards. The super bugs and other infectious agents proliferate in the air and in all those bodily fluids that are the currency of hospitals. Workspaces are shared. If they are lucky, nurses may share a chair—but not for long, as they scurry from room to room doing the very physical work of pushing and lifting patients. 28 HR Pulse Winter 2007 W hat does it say about a hospital’s commitment to its mission statement of “delivering the best in medical care” when many of its employees are walking, talking models of unhealthy lifestyles? Drive back by the loading dock of any hospital, and you’ll find a nurse or an allied health professional dragging on a cigarette. And many of those loose-fitting scrubs we see throughout the hospital conceal some pretty hefty body mass indices. Why can’t they walk the walk? They certainly give the talk! Given the poor physical condition of so many employees, every hospital needs to take a hard look at these three critical factors: • Its stature in the community • Medical costs for its workforce • Productivity levels of these unhealthy employees. How is it that well-educated medical professionals, who are so knowledgeable about health and who see the devastating consequences of poor health habits on a daily basis, embody such un-
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