Seminar to improve staff relationships

Press, 30 November 1987, Page 35

Seminar to improve staff relationships

PA Wellington Most New Zealand health workers are not giving their jobs their utmost because their working environment does not support it, said two visiting Australian management consultants. Some of the environmental Improvements that Ms Patricia Cameron-Hill and Dr Shayne Yates, of Creative Management Services, Australia, will tell Wellington Hospital Board staff about are the use of chocolate fish, compliments, and gold stars.

Their two-day seminar for up to 200 Wellington board staff will be peppered with games and prizes for participants, jazzy music, and role plays demonstrating how to improve hospital staff relationships. The pair, sponsored by the Health Department,

are on their third visit to New Zealand in a year and have presented their seminars to hospital staff throughout New Zealand. Increased specialisation, high technology, and the need to improve services because of these advantages at the same time as health funding shrank, meant hospital staff competed against each other at work instead of co-operating, Ms Cameron-Hill said. “Research has shown patients get better more quickly if the staff are happy,” Dr Yates said.

The consultants will tell hospital staff to thank those who work with them, and to go beyond a specific compliment about the importance of their role, to an edible thankyou.

"We encourage people to give chocolate fish because they do not cost a

lot of money, and it symbolises caring.”

They recommend sending out reports and requisitions with gold stars and "have a nice day,” attached to them. Dr Yates said success comes in comments rather than hard data. They have seen absenteeism drop, along with staff turnover and complaints, and improvements in relationships between hospital staff.

They keep the enthusiasm flowing with quarterly newsletters, sheets of good ideas that hospital staff have come up with, and other hospitals could use.

One tip is painting the dosages of all emergency drugs on a large sign to reduce confusion in a busy accident and emergency ward.