Kathy Saldana Shares Knowledge at Patient Experience Global Conference
Kathy Saldana spoke about the dual benefits of compassion in health care at Beryl Institute's ELEVATE PX25 in Las Vegas for a crowd of 750. Previously, Kathy had been published in the Beryl Institute Patient Experience Journal on a similar topic.
Her article was written from the perspective of “studying” patient experience as a patient rather than through others’ research or insights. Kathy had breast cancer while also being a full-time patient experience advisor, causing her personal and professional worlds to collide in a unique way. Kathy engaged in patient experience in new ways through the long and multi-faceted journey of cancer treatment. It gave her an unwanted, difficult, yet beneficial vantage in her field – one of navigating health care in a potentially life-saving battle.
How did it feel to be recognized as one of The Beryl Institute’s top-ranked speakers from their participant surveys after your presentation?
Validating – I knew I had connected with my audience, as many of them stayed after to speak with me, and I saw some of them crying during my presentation. Patient experience is a challenging field because the role involves educating and supporting clinicians who have often had patient experience endeavors at other health systems. It was profoundly rewarding and humbling. Receiving the news that it was a top-ranking presentation at the conference was extra frosting on the cake!
Why is patient experience so important to you?
I learned about patient experience while working in hospice, a high-stakes environment in terms of experience. I fiercely identified with protecting the end-of-life experiences for patients and became the patient experience team leader. I deeply connected to the sacred space that exists in end-of-life care. Later, I moved into a corporate role and became part of the patient experience task force for all service lines. I realized then that the sacred space of health care is not limited to end-of-life. All forms of health care are sacred spaces. Patients entrust health care workers with their very lives in every encounter. Realizing this made my passion grow for patient experience and sacred space protection. I became very good at patient experience by studying the now world-famous principles of patient experience that were, in part, birthed here at Baptist. Practicing and applying my work here is especially meaningful to me.
How has your perception of what you do changed since your own experiences being a patient over the past few years?
I have internalized how costly the scores and comments that we receive on patient experience surveys are. Each one represents a human being who was in a health care experience ranging from inconvenient to life-threatening. Experience even extends to family members whose loved ones had a life-ending event. While we monitor metrics in patient experience to determine if we are improving or declining, we only glean the true value from the numbers when we acknowledge the humanity behind them. Patient experience is sometimes seen as touchy-feely, but we are measuring how well human beings treat other human beings, and what’s more touchy-feely than that? How we treat fellow humans matters. It matters for them, and it matters for us. I now appreciate patients with more shared knowledge and clinicians with more acute admiration.
