Hospital leadership: Keeping an open door

by Raymond Hino My office in our hospital has two doors. One door leads to the inner office, including our receptionist area and our conference room. The second door leads to the entrance hallway of our hospital and has a sign posted on it. The sign reads "Please Use Other Door." That is not very welcoming. The first door remains open most of the time, since I am proud of the fact that I have an open-door policy. However, it never occurred to me, until recently, that if I wanted to have a real open-door policy, I needed to keep the other door open. I give credit to my staff at the hospital for the idea to keep this door open. During a recent staff meeting I was asked why I didn't keep my door open. When I said I did keep it open, I was surprised to hear the answer. "No. We mean the door that opens to the hallway." I immediately thought, "why not?" I now keep that door open as often as possible and the results have been amazing. There is a bit of risk involved because this is a heavily trafficked corridor in our hospital located between the front lobby and our cafeteria. I have become accustomed to seeing the masses head to the cafeteria for lunch every day and I enjoy seeing all of the smiling faces. And I also have learned you never know who is going to pop in for a visit. One of my first visitors was a very proud employee who wanted to show me her new grandbaby! In the weeks since I started keeping the door open, I have found many of our employees have never see...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs