At its heart, improving the patient experience is all about communication. Feedback from patients consistently and overwhelmingly points us to this focus. More than anything, patients and families want compassionate and clear communication with every person they interact with. They also want coordinated communication from the team so that they understand the plan of care. These communication needs and expectations are at the top of every patient experience data set and are a guiding priority for any patient experience improvement effort. Interventions to improve the experience are largely designed to facilitate communication, build bridges between caregivers, patients and families, and connect the dots for all.

Solving this “communication puzzle” is as complicated now as it has ever been. New technology is constantly being introduced into the care setting. Production pressure on care teams raises the stakes for every interaction. Finally, a new workforce is emerging that adds to the complexity of this moment.

Articles in the media every week examine the impact of ever-present devices on the newest generations entering the workforce. Gen Z workers are the first generation to grow up with ubiquitous personal devices. Many of these articles also note that although we are more electronically connected than ever, we feel more isolated. Our devices bring us more information than ever, but they don’t meet our needs for real and meaningful connection.

This dynamic is also present in healthcare. Caregivers including nurses, physicians, transporters and housekeepers, all carry devices. We can see the task before us on our device — charting, room turnover or dispatches to pick up the next patient — but we can miss the person right in front of us. Studies of Gen Z nurses, for example, illustrate this dynamic. They show a generation that craves connection more than ever. ICombined with the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic drove the greatest period of workforce turnover healthcare has ever seen, the industry now faces a significant communication challenge. How do we enable our team members — who are more device-focused than ever and who have less training in the art of communicating with patients and families — to meet the needs and expectations of those we serve?

There are a couple of things to consider as we think about how to approach this “harder than ever” patient experience communication challenge.

First, the distracting, enveloping blizzard of devices and sources of information that make it so easy to ignore the person in front of us is not just a challenge for Gen Z but for every healthcare worker. The problem is accelerating, but its roots have been planted over the last decade. In general, the effort to create truly integrated clinical and management information systems that support the front line is still very much a work in progress.

One hospital CEO noted publicly this month that his system was using more than 150 different patched together “products” and platforms to support its operations. Another large and prominent health system chief quality officer tracked seven different information and communication subsystems that did not talk to each other during a recent shift in the emergency department, consuming more than 50% of his time toggling between them. Thus, the primary task of rationalizing and integrating the “blizzard of electronic complexity and distraction” must continue, not only for Gen Z workers, but for all healthcare employees.

There are some hopeful examples to look to. For example, Prisma Health, publishing in NEJM Catalyst, documented the gains from their commitment to a single electronically enabled Clinical Operating System, called “Pulse,” including a 59% improvement in top box patient experience scores and a 57% decline in serious safety events. These dramatic win-win-win results mirror what we are seeing among peers committed to establishing a single, aligned clinical operating system built to support the work of front-line team members and managers rather than piecemeal efforts developed over time.

This technology infrastructure work should be accompanied by communication skill building and training for the newest members of our healthcare workforce. Many of these employees came to their jobs during the pandemic without some of the interpersonal communication training that previous generations received. In addition, many came to front-line roles with less practical, hands-on experience than previous generations. The response to COVID-19 created this crunch. Now is the time to address these gaps with training, support and mentoring.

Finally, efforts to address the challenges being faced by the newer members of our workforce should leverage the strengths and perspectives they bring to the table. All of us with kids, friends or acquaintances in this cohort marvel at how quickly and easily they navigate electronic communication streams and make them “work for them” in organizing their lives. Conversely, Gen Z’s sense of isolation and desire for human connection mirrors the same desire from our patients. If we can bridge the gap with technology and skill building for our colleagues, we have the potential for an enormous win-win: a more engaged workforce and better served patients and families.

We must work to both tame the blizzard of disparate communication sources and systems and strengthen skills and habits in our workforce to provide the communication that patients, families and caregivers all crave. Gen Z team members should not just be the “subject” but key members of the alignment effort at the unit, service line and enterprise-wide level. We need their talent for cutting through the electronic fog, and we need to tap into their heightened yearning for human connection for the good of all.

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