Sunday, July 02, 2006
Name badges - it's selfish not to wear them
Hospital staff are at an advantage. They can check your name before talking to you. It will be on their records, on the door or at the end of the bed. And when they use your name it’s really lovely.
“Hi Jurek, you're looking different to the last time I saw you.” When a nurse coming on shift said this to me it made me feel special and feel better in myself. In other words, it was a caring, healing way of addressing me and it was personal. I wasn’t ‘the prostate patient’, I was a person.
What then makes a patient feel even better about him or herself, is if they can respond using the nurse’s name. The same applies in a restaurant, reception area or any other service situation.
In the hospital I was in, most staff didn’t have badges pinned on. Instead, they had easy to read large nametags hanging on a cord around their necks. A bit like you often see for delegates at conferences and seminars these days.
Sometimes the nametags had turned the wrong way round. The name needs to be imprinted on both sides of the nametag to overcome this. They hadn’t taken that little design flaw into account at this hospital (and rarely do at conferences either). If the patient can’t read the nametag it defeats its purpose!
Some staff must have found the nametags irritating (I noticed it tended to be those with a fuller figure!) because they actually tucked their name badge into their shirt pocket, meaning that there was no way any patient would be able to see it, again totally overcoming the purpose of the name badge.
When I couldn't identify someone's name that had dealt with me before, it didn't feel as good when I was talking to them. And if our purpose is to make someone feel better about themselves as a result of being with us, then we have to take this into account.
By the way, in my other life I’ve written an article about the benefits of name badges and how to get staff to wear them. Click on ‘Name Badges’ to read or print out a copy.
“Hi Jurek, you're looking different to the last time I saw you.” When a nurse coming on shift said this to me it made me feel special and feel better in myself. In other words, it was a caring, healing way of addressing me and it was personal. I wasn’t ‘the prostate patient’, I was a person.
What then makes a patient feel even better about him or herself, is if they can respond using the nurse’s name. The same applies in a restaurant, reception area or any other service situation.
In the hospital I was in, most staff didn’t have badges pinned on. Instead, they had easy to read large nametags hanging on a cord around their necks. A bit like you often see for delegates at conferences and seminars these days.
Sometimes the nametags had turned the wrong way round. The name needs to be imprinted on both sides of the nametag to overcome this. They hadn’t taken that little design flaw into account at this hospital (and rarely do at conferences either). If the patient can’t read the nametag it defeats its purpose!
Some staff must have found the nametags irritating (I noticed it tended to be those with a fuller figure!) because they actually tucked their name badge into their shirt pocket, meaning that there was no way any patient would be able to see it, again totally overcoming the purpose of the name badge.
When I couldn't identify someone's name that had dealt with me before, it didn't feel as good when I was talking to them. And if our purpose is to make someone feel better about themselves as a result of being with us, then we have to take this into account.
By the way, in my other life I’ve written an article about the benefits of name badges and how to get staff to wear them. Click on ‘Name Badges’ to read or print out a copy.
# posted by Jurek Leon @ 1:04 pm 
