Anthony Hunter

Name: Anthony Hunter

Date: April 10, 2012

Management 3301

Case Study

Introduction

This case study is about one of the five major hospitals in the Midwest area of the United States. This hospital has recently built on an addition to what it had before and now caters to professional athletes as well as actors and singing stars alike.  This hospital has about 1,200 beds and employs about 4,500 people 40 of which are known as Patient escorts.  The job of a patient escort does not require much training their job is to move patients from one area of the hospital to another.  Patient escorts are usually the last person that someone’s sees while staying the hospital because most of the time they are used to move people from their hospital rooms to the front door where they will have a ride waiting for them to pick them up.  Most of the escorts that are working for the hospital are in their early twenties and do this as a job early in the day and attend school at night.  So this job is what helps pay for their college tuition.   Out of the 40 patient escorts a majority of them or seventy five percent of them are male while the other twenty five percent of the patient escorts are female.   Turnover for this job is quite high because the people who do this job only want to do it for a little while before they move up in the ranks of the hospital.   They end up getting some complaints about their patient escorts and are now trying to find a better way to train the people who take one the job of being a patient escort. 

Problem Identification

Over the past couple of years the hospital has been having some problems with their patient escorts.  Several patients have ended up complaining to the hospital administration about how they were treated some of them feel that they were treated rudely while others feel like they were treated to roughly by one or more of the patient escorts.  Some of the complaints from patients say that they were ordered around or scolded while they were filling out their discharge papers.  Another complained that the patient escort was very careless and reckless while wheeling the patient out to their car. 

Another problem is that a number of the patients who have complained about how an escort has treated them cannot even remember the escort’s name.  The problem with this is because the escort should always be wearing a name tag as part of their uniform but seeing as a number of people cannot even name the person who was their patient escort that must mean that the escorts are not following the rule and wearing the right uniform. 

The final problem that was found was even if they can be identified they can still not be proved of any wrongdoings.  They often counter that the patient that they are working with are usually very irritable as a result illness and hence the more complaining. 

Causes of the Problems

I think that the major cause of this problem is that the high turnover rate for the job of patient escort.  Having high turnover rates I believe is not good for the hospital because with this job you are the last person that they see before they leave the hospital so if you leave them with bad impressions they will think poorly of your hospital.  These people who end up taking on the job of patient escort are only doing this job so that someday they can move on and move up the ladder and become someone who has an even bigger and better job in the hospital.  The new patient escorts do not treat the patients the way that the old patient escort treated the patients.  These escorts have all had the same type of training so I do not understand why the old escorts treated the patients so well while the new escorts treat the patients like it is  a pain to be doing what they are doing to help out with the patients.   The final cause that I will I believe for this problem is that these people who take the job are not the same people who took the job five or even ten years ago.  People now days have a shorter fuse so it is much easier to get them aggravated that what it was before. 

Three Different Solutions

 I believe that there are many different ways to help this hospital in picking out who they higher as patient escorts some I believe are better than that of others but here are the three that I feel will work out the best.  The three ideas that I have are some kind of orientation program, better recruiting in the colleges and universities and finally some kind of training exercise so that they know what is needed of them to perform the job of patient escort. 

My first’s alternative would have to some kind of orientation program.  I believe that this orientation program should not be done by some hospital human resource person but by a patient escort themselves or someone who has done the job of patient escort.  The reason that it should be done by someone who is either doing or has done the job is because this person can actually talk about some experiences that they have had while doing this job.  Also having this person run their orientation they see how it is supposed to be done rather than be told this is how you to do this and this are how you do that. 

My second alternative would have to be better recruiting in the colleges and universities.  The way that they recruit is they find someone in college looking for a job and do not really care about working in this line of work.   I believe that this is a problem they should be more selective about who they recruit and how they recruit those people.  I believe that they should go into the medical program and recruit interns or applicants through that way.  The reason I say that they should recruit this way is because these people are going into the medical field as a profession either being a doctor, surgeon or even a nurse.  Having these people working at your hospital helps out both you the hospital as well as the person who is working for you.  It helps out you the hospital because you know that the people who are going to be your patient escorts will actually care about the patients that they are escorting out.  Also it helps the people who are working for you because it will give them some real life experience and show them what it is like to work in this profession. 

My final alternative that I would say that the hospital should setup would have to be a training exercise that all applicants that are interviewing for the job must do to make sure that they know what they are doing.  Having a training exercise would give the applicant some hands on experience. Can you tell them all you want about this is how we treat our patients or this is what we do when are patients do this but talking is never better than any type of real world experience.  This training exercise will also give your applicant a way to see whether or not this is the job for them right then and their rather than having them get higher and them finding this is not what they had signed up for. 

Best Alternative

I believe that the best alternative that they should go with is the way that they recruit and decide who they should or who they should not hire.  The reason that I say that this is their best alternative is because if you change the way that you recruit people I believe that you will find it better because then you will only be hiring or recruiting people who actually want to work in the medical profession rather than someone who is just looking for a job and do not care about whether or not they do a good job or not.  I  understand that changing the way that you recruit may be costly but in the end it the cost will probably offset because you will probably only hire the best of the best and the people you hire will probably get less complaints than that of the people you have that are currently doing the  job of patient escort.  I believe that this is always going to be the easiest to implement because all that you need to do is get with the people who does all of the recruiting for the hospital and tell them what exactly you are looking for so they know what the hospital is looking for. 

The reason that I say that the way that they recruit will be there best alternative is because even if you changed the orientation program or had some kind training exercise they still will not be able to help you see whether or not they are really wanting to work their or are only looking for a job.   Another reason that I say that recruiting is better than that of the other two is because of the cost.  I believe that it will cost a lot of money to change your whole orientation program and I do not think that the end result will change as much as if you where to change the way that you recruit.  Also the cost of a training program is also very expensive and I do not think that the cost and the performance will even out.

Implementation Steps

The first step in implementing this recruiting process is setup a meeting with recruits who do the recruiting in by bringing them and telling them what exactly you are looking for in your patient escorts.  Second is your recruiters then go to the college and recruit for the hospital they will know exactly what you are looking for whether you are looking people who they think would do the job best or people who you think will actually take this job serious and actually might want to move within the hospital and not take it as a job just because it is a job to have.   I believe that it will take a couple of months before you are able to implement this strategy of recruiting.   It make take some time before you can implement it but when you implement this style of recruiting  but  you will see that your patient escorts are much more liked than that of your patient escorts right now. 

Conclusion

 As you can see your patient escorts as of right now not well liked and have actually hurt the hospital because these people are the last people that they before they leave the hospital.  Over the last couple of years you have had many complaints about how your patient escorts have been treating these patients.  So I believe that if you decide to change the way that you recruited also who you recruited would help the hospital to a great extent.   A couple of other ideas that I had that I believe the hospital could decide to do are to somehow change the orientation program or some kind of training exercise while being interviewed I believe that either one of these would also be good to implement because both of these will tell the recruiter what exactly is needed to complete this type of job or occupation.