And now it's my pleasure to introduce Ms. Jenny Nguyen. She'll be talking about employee experience, maintaining staff morale, and managing a disruptive staff member, which I think are very, very critical aspects, especially in the post-COVID era. Ms. Nguyen received her MSN at Western Governors University and has been an RN for 14 years. She spent her healthcare career in the gastroenterology department at Medical University of South Carolina in various roles. And so really look forward to the talk and maybe picking up some practice goals that we can take back to our unit. Jenny. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Without further ado, I'm gonna jump right into it. It is my pleasure to be with you guys today. I have attended an ASGE conference in the past and I always found it to be very beneficial. So I hope that my discussions today glean the same value for those participating. My first discussion is gonna be on employee experience, maintaining staff morale, and managing a disruptive staff member. All of these go hand in hand and unfortunately something I have a lot of experience with. I have nothing to disclose today in relation to today's topic. In today's, I'm gonna cover employee experience and why it matters, ways that we can measure employee experience, tools to improve employee experience and morale, what defines disruptive behavior and the impact of that, and then strategies to address disruptive behavior. So let's start with the definition. This one reads, an employee experience is the perception the employee has towards their place of employment and their work. It begins when they apply for their position and their perceptions are continually influenced by their experiences at work. So everybody participating today, whether you're on the panel or you're attending and participating virtually, and regardless of your role or title, we're all employees. We're all employees, a part of an endoscopy team. And more largely, we're an employees of the healthcare system in which we're employed, right? And for all of us, our perception of our job, of our task, of our employment, it is continually influenced and impacted by our day-to-day interactions and experiences. So to me, the employee journey is the employee spectrum, right? There's an entire spectrum and it's literally your journey of your employment. There's three main phases. There's the pre-employment, the employment, and then the post-employment. So let's dive into just the pre-employment phase. So if we all wanna reflect on our current positions that we hold right now. So whenever you began the search for this position, were you recruited or did you happen to come by this position and you had no intention of ever getting to GI? But what was the search like for your position? How difficult was it for you to apply for your position? How long did it take you to get contacted for your interview? Was your pay comparable? What was the culture, communications, and interactions like with the person who employed you and from HR, right? All of these are great examples of how for all of us as the employee, our experience was impacted from all of these steps and this all transpired before we ever even stepped foot on our endoscopy unit. So let's start with a little question. In your opinion, what do you think is the average timeframe from when a candidate applies to a position to when they have an interview scheduled? Do you think it is three to five days, seven to nine days, 10 to 14 days or greater than two weeks? That's interesting. So it's pretty split. So Indeed conducted a study in March of this past year and it actually takes greater than two weeks for candidates on average across the United States to be contacted for an interview. For the healthcare system I work for, in healthcare systems, we have a lot of agency and contract working, burnout resilience, travel nursing and text traveling. It's a big part of healthcare in today's world. So I think it's a great question. It's a big part of healthcare in today's world. So part of my role as a hiring manager where I'm currently employed, I'm actually held to a very tight timeline. Hiring managers in my organization, we are expected to screen candidates the same day within 24 hours that any candidate applies for a position to contact them and we're expect to offer positions within 48 hours. So a very tight timeline, but on average, it does take greater than two weeks. All right, so let's dive into an employee engagement model. So employee engagements model are simply a framework of how a facility or an organization can help all of its care team members or employees feel engaged, trusted, cared for, valued, et cetera, for their place of employment. So this is the AON Hewitt model and I personally like this engagement model probably the best. The AON Hewitt model listed at six main categories which are all listed here. The work, people, our employees, and then there's the employee engagement model. The work, people, opportunities, total rewards, company practices, and quality of life. And all of these buckets are intertwined and they continually, continually, apologies, continually impact the work experience of employees. So this is a busy slide, but let's dive into it a little bit. So think about your experience right now as an employee. So think about your work, your day-to-day work task. Do you have a sense of accomplishment with your daily work? Do you have enough autonomy to where you are able to do things on your own accord in a safe manner? What about the people, the people of your unit, the people of your organization from your executive senior leadership to your supervisor? Is there good collaboration amongst all the CARE team members? What opportunities do you have? Do you personally, for your personal desires, are you a GI tech? There's a clinical ladder, GI tech one and GI tech two. As a nurse or a tech, do you wanna get certified? Do you wanna attend conferences? And are these opportunities available at your facility and are they encouraged by your supervisor? Are they presented and talked about? For your total rewards, right? What is the brand or reputation of your organization? Are you proud to say that you work for your unit and your healthcare facility? Is the pay and benefits comparable? Do you receive the recognition for the job in which you do? And as an employee, we all wanna get recognition in a different manner. What about the company practices of your facility? Is the diversity and inclusion an important factor? Is there a good talent? What are the recruitment strategies? Is there a focus on the customers and the clients in which we serve? And what is communication, the culture of your units and of the organization? And then last but certainly not least is quality of life. We've talked a little bit about burnout here a little bit today and work-life balance is so important, right? So all of these main buckets continually influence the work experience of employees. And that's a part of the employee experience spectrum of their journey at work. So when I was creating this and really talking about cultivating positive employee experiences, I came across this quote by Simon Sinek and I think it was very applicable for today's discussion. And it reads, when people are financially invested, they wanna return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute, right? So for large healthcare organizations, it is comprised of multiple levels of leaders, formal and informal. If you think about the executive leadership of your organization, they are providing the strategic growth. Where's our next footprint? Where are we going? What community is underserved and where are the needs of the community? And they provide that vision and goals, right? And at the day, healthcare, very simplified as, it is a business, it's money in and money out. We need to pay our care team members and our providers. We get reimbursed. There are payers and different insurance strategies, right? But strategic vision and growth and visions, there's a lot of emphasis on financial stability and good clinical quality outcomes. You have to have both of those to be successful for a healthcare facility, right? But so many teams impact those things. So a middle manager like myself, for me to get my people and my teams invested, they have to want to contribute for those that want that financial return, right? So I have found if I engage my team and I work with my team and I create positive employee experiences, they're engaged, they have better experiences, they have better morale and they become more invested in the work in which they do and the people in which we serve. So there's two studies that I include in today's discussion. This is the first one. And this kind of theme of the study was leader set the tone, right? So there's lots of leaders, but this one talked about how leader visibility is pivotal. You have to be an engaged leader to be a visible leader and you have to be visible to be engaged with your team. You have to have clear, concise two-way communication. So sure, there's some times where I have linear communication. I might send an email to my staff or delegate, but most of the time I try to include two-way communication. That way it gives a platform for my staff to give me that feedback and to collaborate with me. And then recognition. As a leader, am I recognizing my team, right? Nobody wants to be recognized the same way. I have care team members that are introverted and very shy and they would be mortified if I brought them up at a public staff meeting to recognize them. I have other staff that resonate with that and they would love to have that public recognition, right? But as a leader, you set the tone and part of that is recognizing your team for the value in which they do. One example of this is sometimes it's recognizing the value and praising them and thanking them, but it's also just acknowledging the work that somebody does. Part of my practice is every Monday morning, first thing I do is I log in to see how busy was our call weekend. And I reach out to my two call nurses and I say, I saw you had a really busy call weekend. Is there anything that we could have done better? Did you have any barriers? Was it successful? But even if it's just to say, thank you, I know that you gave up a lot of your weekend to provide good care to our patients this weekend. So that goes a long way. The second study, this theme was about maintaining staff morale. Some of these themes kind of carried over from the previous one. Again, talked about communication. You have to have good, clear communication to be able to engage with your team and round on your team and ensure that you have good morale on your team. It talked about employee development plan. So again, this is a part of that AUN Hewitt model, but what do your staff want? Really knowing your team personally and professionally and supporting what they need and helping them be successful. Having frequent consistent staff meetings is pivotal. Again, I think this goes hand in hand with creating that platform that you get that engagement, that they feel heard, they have a voice and you're working with them and collaborating with them. Employee engagement team. So does your unit have a unit-based committee to where you can engage with your team? If you're a magnet hospital like we are, you're gonna have a unit-based shared governance council comprised of different clinical role team members that are gonna work on unit initiatives. But do you have something even outside of your shared governance? Maybe a reward and recognition committee like we have where you can engage with your team to work on morale of the unit. And then lastly, again, it talked about recognition boards and celebration. So having a consistent way to recognize your team and celebrate them. I think that recognition is a very contagious, sorry, contagious healthy behavior that you want for your team for staff morale. So I wanted to share some creative initiatives that I have implemented in DOSCP for the last four years. I included this quote because I think it fits perfectly. I tell my team all the time, we work hard, we're very respectful, we have good team and behaviors, but I want us to have fun to make a difference, right? I think any of us can acknowledge if you walk into a unit or an environment, you can tell if somebody's having fun, if they generally enjoy each other and the work in which they're doing. And bring some fun, I think lighten the mood and it brings, it breathes little life into you, right? So it's good for the team. So some things that we've done is we do an annual sock exchange every year now where if you wanna participate, it's at Christmas, you bring a pair of wrap socks. There are no restrictions with the socks that you bring. So it's quite comical and fun. We do a Halloween costume contest. Last year was our first one doing this. I got permission from my upline to kind of work out of our uniforms for the day, if you would. And a couple of these picture here, we had some dogs, a mermaid. I was Mario and Luigi with my assistant nurse manager and I had executive leadership come in and they did a Halloween costume contest judging. And I offered for the three top winners, I had Uber Eats or DoorDash lunch of their choice at the hospital. I've done rock painting, which I think is just another really creative outlet for staff. We've done it in lieu of a staff meeting one time and I had it set up in the waiting areas. It was really interesting to kind of like, it was a very calming activity. And then we personally do staff meetings twice a month. And so some things that we do in staff meetings, once in a blue moon is we'll do like a guess who for a new staff, which is a fun team building, a way to kind of unplug. Staff will share maybe something that, a fun fact about them or something somebody wouldn't guess. And then we also do family feud and that's the last picture there. So it seems pretty legitimate because we have the buzzer and the theme music and we do two types of family feud. We do a colonoscopy family feud where it is educational and all things colonoscopy may be the historical overview and the evolution of endoscopy, general advanced endoscopy about medications, preps, landmarks, patient education. And then we do a fun family feud where our audience is our endoscopy staff. And then we do it about our care team members. So it's just some really fun, creative initiatives we've done, which has really helped boost morale, really cultivate those positive experiences and they've become traditions that the staff will ask me for when are we doing it next? So I wanna talk a little bit about staff support and staff recognition. To me, I think these are both so important for staff and it's really something that I really try to cultivate and really bring a part of our culture of the unit in which I manage. So left-hand side, we're gonna focus on supporting staff first. I've included a couple of pictures here. The very bottom picture, we had a nurse who unfortunately was diagnosed with cancer and has had to undergo some cancer treatment. She's been very open about it. And so we really came together. We had some t-shirts made and it says, we're with you in this fight, the fight you're not alone. And her first day back to work, we all wore this shirt to really just support her. We participate in community walks. We've done mental health, colon cancer, and breast cancer. We have done community walks that have really resonated with our staff. For example, for mental health community walks, we bring spouses, kids, dogs. It's a whole family affair. And we've chose mental health because we've had care team members that have either struggled with anxiety, depression, or have mental health diagnosis themselves, but they've also maybe had parents or children that they've lost to suicide. And so as a team, they really tried to normalize mental health and support. We have a unit-based hospitality committee. This is a committee that is comprised of solely endoscopy staff. And they are kind of the ones that really initiate potlucks for staff, recognizing staff. It might be a new baby, an adoption, getting married, if you've lost a loved one. So just really trying to show support for staff in times of life when things occur. And then something I do personally as a manager, when my staff come to me to share their hardships or struggles, personally, I really advertise the resource that my hospital already has, right? So we have an employee assistance program. It is a wonderful program that is financially free for all the care team members and your dependents 25. And they're highly credentialed professionals. And they offer support for a multitude of categories. And so I really say, have you contacted EAP? It's a completely confidential service, but I really advertise that. If I have staff that come to me and share, that I know they have religious beliefs, I will offer to get their rabbi or their chaplain or say, do you wanna go sit in the chapel for a minute? So I really support my staff that meets their needs and their beliefs. On the right-hand side, we're talking about recognizing staff. So we have a nurse and tech year of the ceremony every year, which is something that I love. It's voted on by the peers and we buy gifts and recognize them and we have banners we put up. And so it's really just recognizing and celebrating the staff and just the wonderful things that they do. We do have a reward and recognize committee. So this is a group, again, just of the individual unit. And they really take time every month to recognize either members from our own team or other members. It might be that they're recognizing a transporter that's done a really good job or maybe somebody in biomed that's really been a pillar and just incredible for our team. And then I personally send thank you cards to my staff. I try to send about five to 10 a month. It might be new care team members that have joined, somebody who's maybe precepting. Maybe there's somebody who's just placed a lot of our safety event shields and is really trying to, you really contribute to that safe culture in our unit. And I mail that to their homes, they get it. So this study, I think just highlights and supports all the things I just said, that no individual approach is gonna insignificantly increase morale. If you do a multitude of approaches simultaneously, then it's gonna increase the morale of your team. At the end of the day, if you have a morale, a high morale in your team, an engaged team, and you're having positive experiences for your employees, then ultimately it is a win for everybody for the efficiency of the unit, for the endoscopist, for the patients, for staff retention. There's so many benefits to it. So to switch topics a little bit, we're gonna talk about disruptive behavior. So this definition is ultimately healthcare providers or staff interactions with other healthcare personnel, patients, or family that interferes with patient care or adversely affects the healthcare team's ability to work effectively, right? I think we can all agree that disruptive behavior is just that, it's disruptive, right? It disrupts so many things. Unfortunately, no team is perfect. There's so many external factors and internal factors that can contribute to disruptive behavior, and we've all seen it and recognize it. So it's so important to know what it is and understand the impacts of it. So there's three main impacts of disruptive behavior. Ultimately, it's the patient, the staff, and organization. If a patient is experiencing disruptive behavior, they're gonna be dissatisfied. They might lose trust, right? They might, for some patients coming to the hospital already is very anxiety provoking, right? I've heard from many patients, I'm terrified to get a colonoscopy. They seem very vulnerable and it's very private, right? So it's challenging for them. So then if they come to the hospital and experience disruptive behavior, they might lose that trust, right? They might now not wanna be open with their nurse practitioner, their endoscopist, their nurse about their symptoms or thoughts, their feelings, right? They may not be compliant. They might, with their regimen set forth or subsequent procedures that need to occur. Staff, if they're experiencing disruptive behavior, they're gonna be dissatisfied. If they continue to start behavior and it's not addressed or turned around, then they're gonna leave. Nobody wants to work part of a dysfunctional team. And then ultimately that affects the organization with loss of profit. If you're not having patients schedule repeat procedures and you're battling staff turnover retention, then that's gonna impact the organization. So some things that I like to do that I wanna share with you guys for disruptive behavior is rounding on your team. If you round on your team and you really, really know your team, then you know what ticks. You can tell, I can tell, looking at one of my care team members, by their body language, by the tone that they're using, by how they look, I can tell if somebody's frustrated. And that allows me to pull them and be proactive instead of reactive to their behavior. And I can say, are you okay? I wanna check in with you. It seems like you're a little off, what's going on? You seem frustrated, right? And really pulling that information out to them. I think if you round on your team and you have that relationship with your team, then your team is comfortable coming to you and say, I'm frustrated, something's not working well, and you collaborate on the front end. When disruptive behavior does happen, address it quickly. Treat everybody in a fair, consistent manner. And I think as a leader, if you have fair expectations and consistent expectations with your team, then that levels the playing field, right? But also end of the day, no team is perfect, right? So I think as a manager, partner with your HR team, because when issues do arise and you need that support, then I think having that relationship with your HR team is pivotal and you need that. So in summary, these are my closing talks. I said, employee is the fundamental element of a healthcare organization. Positive employee experience is crucial to ensure optimal clinical outcomes, enhance patient satisfaction scores, and prevent financial losses. Leadership and managerial support sets the stage for employee experience and workplace practices make the experience. Disruptive behavior interferes with or adversely affects patient care and or team's ability to work effectively. Disruptive behavior negatively impacts patients, staff, and the organization. And the ideal system for addressing disruptive behavior is fair, objective, and responsive. Thank you all so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

employee experience

staff morale

disruptive behavior

healthcare field

patient satisfaction scores

employee engagement model