Workshops that Work: Physician Involvement in Service Training

Physician involvement in service training initiatives can have a significant impact on the patient experience. This paper highlights some of the key components of what makes physician involvement in training engagements successful and includes anecdotes and data to support the findings. Our service training program emerged from a desire to help clinic sections improve the patient experience. Our workshops contained customized materials that addressed service priority areas, as identified by patient satisfaction survey results, for individual clinic sections and included opportunities to practice the concepts introduced in each session. However, we were missing one key ingredient in the recipe for a successful training program - physician involvement. This paper focuses on a best practice in which two physicians took an active role in creating, customizing and delivering service training for their clinic section and made a tremendous impact on their overall patient satisfaction scores and section morale.