Every marketer’s playbook includes a chapter on customer service.

Remind the public of your philosophy. Recount warm deeds. Highlight delighted patients. And if the satisfaction rating agencies have good things to say, consider going public with the data.

On the tactical front, these moves are all appropriate. But step back and ask the bigger question. Does your organization have a strategy to improve customer service beyond the oft-repeated nostrums of treating patients like family and playing nice with co-workers?

Washington (DC) Hospital Center has one. Count on others to follow its lead.

Mark Smith, MD, chairman of emergency medicine at the 926-bed hospital, sat through a screening of Hate Comes Home,an intense, interactive DVD aimed at overcoming prejudice among high school students. Actors create the environment, then viewers are presented with a series of on-screen choices. How they respond at critical points dictates how the story unfolds.

“I could tell it worked because I had tears in my eyes,” says Smith.

Moved by the power of the tool, he met with James F. Caldas, president of Washington Hospital Center, urging him to subscribe to the same immersion approach to customer service.

Caldas agreed, and the hospital engaged Potomac, MD-based WILL Interactive, Inc., the creator of Hate Comes Home,to develop a hospital-specific video program to expose employees to the consequences – good and otherwise – of their choices. The result is The Anatomy of Care,a dramatic portrayal of life in a hospital, where viewers make choices and witness the responses.

The Anatomy of Care was shot on videotape and is available for viewing as a DVD and online. Employees can work with the program one-on-one, or a facilitator can present the story to groups. The Web-enabled option allows tracking of an individual’s responses to the issues confronted, and the same tool can track how long the learner spends with the program. Washington Hospital Center awarded continuing education units to members of its staff that used The Anatomy of Care.

In the next column is a shot from the video. In the opening segment, a TV reporter visits a fictional metropolitan hospital. Escorted by an administrator, she witnesses a series of rude, hostile, and unsympathetic acts, leading to an extremely unflattering portrayal of the facility and its employees. Stung by the story, the actor portraying the CEO pulls his management staff together to re-establish priorities.

At this point viewers have the choice of following the experiences of one of five characters (doctor, nurse, desk clerk, patient transporter, and environmental services technician). As the stories unfold, learners are presented with stressful slice-of-life scenarios where they have to make tough decisions and live out the consequences of their actions.

Each character segment has four to 12 decision points where the action stops and choices are presented on screen. Once a choice is made, the program resumes following the selected path. Individuals can complete a segment in 20 to 30 minutes, the time depending on the choices they make when facing various decision points.

In facilitated group training, participants often work through more than one segment, discuss choices made, and follow the scenarios to see how differently they play out when other decisions are made. These immersions can run two-and-a-half hours.

Two critical things occur with the program, says Sharon Sloane, president and CEO of WILL Interactive. “One is you walk in the other’s shoes and see a situation from [that person's] point of view. Then the DVD allows you to see how others see you, how things you do and say are perceived by others.”

In one example, Janice, a charge nurse, faces conflicting demands. A patient has just requested she come to her bedside to talk about an issue when an administrator calls. In a pointed discussion, the administrator reminds Janice that she needs to be at a meeting in five minutes to represent nursing on an important issue.

Viewers can have Janice go to the patient’s beside and be late for the meeting, or ask a staff nurse to meet with the patient and report to her when she returns.

In another segment, Clara, a desk clerk on a busy unit, forgets a physician’s verbal request to place a stat order. When confronted with Clara’s mistake, the viewer chooses her response. Does she apologize and order it on the spot, or remind the doctor that it wouldn’t have happened if he had allowed protocol and given her the order in writing?

When the viewer selects the apology mode, the physician softens and admits he was part of the problem and will work to do things the right way in the future. The rest of the scene builds from a positive framework. When Clara replies critically, the doctor replies in kind, casting a pall over later interactions.

Immersion learning
WILL Interactive develops all of its programs on a patented, interactive behavior modification platform called Virtual Experience Immersive Learning Simulations® or VEILS®.

The company has developed a number of immersion learning tools for the military that address many of the emotional aspects of being a soldier, such as experiencing the death of a squad member or leaving home on deployment.

Washington Hospital Center rolled out The Anatomy of Carein summer 2006 as part of a service excellence education program. Some 5,000 employees from all areas of the organization have gone through the training in groups of 10 to 30. On a five-point scale, 52 percent gave the video the highest mark. All told, 98 percent gave it a good, very good, or excellent rating.

“They said it was better than anything we used before, and that includes reward programs and outside consultants,” says Christine Shamloo, director of education and training for the ER One Institute at the hospital. “The new program – hands down – was the best.”

Scripts for the video were developed from focus groups with staff members. Shamloo says employees identify with the characters and the conversations. It makes them think a little more about how their responses are received.

There was a measurable impact, says Sloane. “Patient satisfaction went up, and it was the only intervention [occurring] at the time.”

Shamloo isn’t ready to quantify the hospital’s improvement yet. “It has only been seven months since the initiation of the program, and we continue to see patient satisfaction increase significantly each quarter. We want to wait until a year from the initiation of the program before we share our results.”

She does note an unusual occurrence. “Department heads came to us looking for the program so they could share it with staff.”

Safety of cyberspace
The goal of the simulation training is to improve behavior by allowing users to play out difficult situations in the safety of cyberspace before they live them out.

“Our sweet spot is where there are gray areas like critical thinking and judgement,” notes Sloane. People, she says, want to be comfortable in their own mind on what the right response should be.

“Under pressure you might not have time to think. The ripple effects of your actions are long term if you make the wrong choice. Down the road, there can be huge consequences,” states Sloane.

Washington Hospital Center’s Smith agrees. “In healthcare we all have distinct roles – and that leads to complex sets of interactions. Sometimes we lose track that there is a person at the other end of the interaction. Anatomy of Carelets you see the world through the eyes of the other person,” he says. “That is where empathy originates.”

Washington Hospital Center partnered with WILL Interactive to develop The Anatomy of Care.The teaching hospital, which is among the 25 largest hospitals in the United States, is the flagship facility of the not-for-profit MedStar Health system. The video uses professional actors, along with Washington Hospital Center employees in the background.

The program is being marketed to other hospitals, with licensing fees based on the number of employees and sites within a system.

Although the program is based on characters at a large urban teaching facility, the messages covered in the program are universal, Sloane observes. “The issues are what is important,” she says.

In healthcare, Sloane notes, people are used to focusing on the hard science. “At the end of the day, a little kindness and compassion and human understanding can go a long way toward healing,” she says.

“The power of this program is by creating a story, it becomes experiential, not abstract intellectual education,” says Smith. “The viewer is hooked in emotionally, and the transformation is that [the individual] sees the world as someone else sees it. That creates a learning moment that gets incorporated into patterns of behavior.”

For more information, visit www.willinteractive.com.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 28, 2007 – Potomac, Md.-based WILL Interactive, Inc., a leader in virtual experience behavior modification gaming, is partnering with Washington Hospital Center, the largest hospital in the District of Columbia, to create a Virtual Experience Immersive Learning Simulation® (VEILS®) addressing the critical area of customer care for hospital staff.

“Anatomy of Care is a proactive and effective tool to help today’s hospitals enhance customer care, the ambiance of caring that is the foundation for patients and their families at a time of need,” said Sharon Sloane, CEO of WILL Interactive. “WILL is pleased to have created this simulation training in partnership with Washington Hospital Center.”

Anatomy of Care is designed to educate all hospital staff from doctors to nurses, clerical staff to patient transporters and environmental services employees, as it demonstrates how their actions affect patient care and the overall image of a hospital.

“What Anatomy of Care is really about is being able to see the world through the eyes of one another,” said Mark Smith, MD, Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine and ER One Institute at Washington Hospital Center, who is also a co-creator of Anatomy of Care.

Anatomy of Care is a Web-based training program designed to improve the way health care workers respond to difficult situations that confront them every day. Players choose one of five characters to role play (doctor, nurse, clerical, patient transporter and environmental service worker) at a fictional metropolitan hospital. In the VEILS®, learners are presented with stressful slice-of-life scenarios in which they must make tough decisions and live out the consequences of their actions. Successful navigation of the interactive movie requires honest compassion, sensitive interpersonal dealings, and clarity of values. The goa1 of the simulation training is to improve behavior of hospital employees. Anatomy of Care allows users to play out difficult situations in the safety of cyberspace before they live them out.

WILL Interactive’s patented VEILS® technology has been proven effective in changing behavior and enhancing positive decision-making. The experiential learning provided by WILL Interactive’s simulations teaches users how to think rather than what to think. Anatomy of Care acknowledges the reality that in a hospital, every encounter with a patient is important. Each encounter can influence patients and their families about the hospital experience and the medical care they receive. The quality of care and each customer’s perception of that care have very real consequences for the success of the institution.

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