Posted by Alex Jofriet on August 09, 2012
This summer’s family vacation was a trip to Disney World!! I had an awesome time. I watched my sister ride Mount Everest roller-coaster seven times. I got to ride some rides myself; my favorite was the new Star Wars ride. The rides are good but the thing that stuck in my mind the most about the trip was an experience I had during one of the meals.
My parents bought a meal plan for us while we were there and this allowed us to enter into the Disney “system” that I had some food concerns. This was cool because it meant the chef came out to our table for every sit-down meal we had, to talk to me about what foods I could eat. There was one particular chef at an Italian restaurant that we ate at on the last day that I really liked. All of the chefs before him, at other restaurants, were great and very pleasant, but they all seemed preoccupied with the food that they had left in the kitchen. This one chef was different – when he came to our table he took out a pad of paper and wrote down what my dietary needs were as we talked to him. Maybe it was his manner, or his attention to detail, but somehow he made me feel like I was his one and only concern at the time.
This experience confirmed in my mind something I learned from my experiences at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati; it is the little things that matter; it is the little things that make or break a patient’s experience.
Last summer, at the same time as our family vacation this summer, I was in the hospital getting ready for resection surgery. One of the little things that I remember the most from that “vacation” was meeting the surgeon for the first time. My surgeon had a New York Yankees lanyard with his ID on it. I instantly could relate with him because I had something outside of my medical care that I could talk to him about – not that I am a Yankees fan; I am a Toronto Blue Jays fan so that made the conversations even more interesting. It is that personal touch, that relating to the person that was caring for me, that made a difference.
In a similar experience last year, I have a friend who on his first appointment when he met his new doctor, talked to that new doctor about Harry Potter for half of his appointment. The doctor was wearing a Gryffindor lanyard. I know another lanyard story; I am convinced lanyards are magical! The magic is in the conversation they bring.
It is the little things that count. From food to lanyards or chefs to doctors ... it is these little things that patients remember and make all the difference in the world to the overall experience. Whether you are going through the trauma of a hospital stay or the trauma of an IBD patient trying to eat out, it is these simple things that make the patient see the caregiver as a person; someone that cares about you and even a little less scary.