Care with compassion
Health ministry aims to improve customer experience
APPROXIMATELY 200 staff members at the Back River Hospital have been trained in customer service as part of the Ministry of Health’s push to improve customer care at public health facilities.
Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton says that this is part of a new compassionatecare programme, which was launched at the Black River Hospital in St Elizabeth last Thursday.
CUSTOMER SERVICE CULTURE
According to Tufton, an important part of the overall response to public health is a mechanism to ensure that all public-health employees begin to enhance, develop, build, and strengthen a culture of customer service.
The compassionate-care programme seeks to begin a process of emphasising the customer service component of public health and delivering care with compassion.
It comprises three components, including training staff in customer service and enhancing basic infrastructure such as the accident and emergency areas to ensure that patients wait in areas of comfort with pictorial messages of advice and encouragement.
The third component is volunteerism, which seeks to boost partnerships and engage Jamaicans in offering compassionate care with the supervision of staff.
Tufton said that he is confident that the public health sector has been responding well despite the challenges.