Nemours' brand new Children's Hospital in Orlando won't open until October, but the pediatric health system is demonstrating its commitment to patient- and family-centered care before the first child is admitted.
The health system has tapped into the wisdom and experience of a dozen or so parents of chronically ill children. Those parents volunteer to sit on a Family Advisory Board that meets with leadership candidates to gauge their commitment to the patient-and-family-centered mission.
"They may look great on paper. We can't judge that part. We can't judge their experience and their education background and their technical skills," says advisory board member Lynda Griffin of nearby Maitland, FL. Her six-year-old son suffers from cystic fibrosis.
"What we can do is part a gut feeling and part the candidate being transparent and open and also being open to working with the families," says Griffin, who has taken part in about 30 interviews. "One of my favorite questions for a candidate, depending on the job they are interviewing for, is if you think a parent should be there when something like a code is happening?"
"When somebody tells me that they do not think a parent should be in a situation where a child may be coding, or that there isn't a spot for the parent there, it tells me they're a little closed-minded to the whole patient-and-family-centered care collaboration with the Nemours team," she says.
Rick Kennedy, senior human resources business partner at Nemours Children's Hospital, concedes that he was a little leery when the idea of bringing parents into the interview process was first put forward.
"As an HR guy, yes, at the beginning I had a little anxiety. These are not folks with a lot of experience with interviewing," he says.
Nemours designed a two-hour interview skills program and brought in parents for training so they could be more comfortable asking the questions and better assess the candidates for leadership positions.
"We wanted to make sure they had some understanding of what is an appropriate question, how you structure it, and what are the inappropriate questions we want to stay away from," Kennedy says. "But having sat in on numerous interviews of candidates with the parents never once have I cringed or said 'Let's take a time out.' If I put a trained and experienced mom or dad in front of a leadership candidate I have no anxiety that they will do the right thing and ask the right questions."
The families on the advisory panel came with different backgrounds and experiences. "Some had business experience and had done interviews before, and others had never sat on the side of the table with the interviewers. They had been interviewees," Kennedy says.
Regardless of their backgrounds, Kennedy says the parents' input is highly valued because the HR professionals and medical staff cannot replicate the unique perspective of a parent with a chronically ill child. "From an HR perspective they bring something very real to the table as we are assessing candidates," he says. "When we think about the care of a child there is a partnership between the parents and the doctors the nurses and allied health professionals. We thought it was hugely important that parents have a voice in who we are bringing on as leaders.
Just how important is the parents' input on leadership candidates?
"In HR, there are a lot of touch points through the hiring process," Kennedy says. "The family perspective on a candidate is weighed very heavily. This is not cursory. It is not presenting the parents with an opportunity and then arbitrarily dismissing their thoughts. It has really set the tone, not only for who we hire, but how critical the parent is in partnering with us. It's been absolutely phenomenally successful in my view. The parents are hugely invested in this."
Griffin says it's a "privilege" to play a vital role in the leadership selection for the new 95-bed hospital, which will have nearly 600 employees when it opens this fall. She says having parents take part in the selection process also sends a clear message to the candidates.
"We want them to see that it is not just visiting with the physician and the nurse but also taking it to the next level of care all around; from the minute you walk through the door to the time you leave it is patient-and-family collaboration."
"The nurses and physicians do what they do really well. But we know our kids really well and that helps overall because you're getting another person that is part of the team looking out to make this child get better."
John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.