New best-selling book, Visionary Leadership in Healthcare, highlights importance of Press Ganey’s Compassionate Connected Care™ and human-centric insights

12 May 2022

Healthcare transformation isn’t going to happen overnight—it takes visionary leaders moving away from a hierarchical approach to a more engaged, equitable, inclusive and caring leadership style to drive nursing forward in this new era of healthcare. 

Press Ganey leaders, Mary Jo Assi, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, associate chief nursing officer, and Senem Guney, PhD, vice president of language analytics, share the importance of designing human-centered care and leveraging AI-generated insights to identify areas for efficiency and improvement in Sigma Theta Tau’s newest publication, Visionary Leadership in Healthcare. 

“The contributions by Mary Jo and Senem to the entire patient journey continue to prioritize our main objective in healthcare—caring for the patients. Their impactful insights are extremely timely for the period of healthcare we find ourselves in that requires constant focus on the caliber of care provided to the patient and response to real-time feedback to ensure we continue to put ourselves in the patient’s shoes.” 

Jeff Doucette
DNP, R.N., NEA-BC, FACHE, FAAN
Chief Nursing Officer, Press Ganey

“As nursing leaders, it is imperative that we always reiterate the importance of elevating nursing excellence and shine light on the most important aspects of the profession and duties of a nurse,” said Assi. “Being a nurse is one of the highest honors in our society, and it is our utmost responsibility to ensure that patients view their personal environment of care as safe and genuinely feel that they have established a human connection with those who care for them.” 

Assi and Guney highlight the importance of Compassionate Connected Care™ and strategies healthcare leaders can integrate into care practices to improve employee working environments and overall patient care experience. The model’s six themes reflect why nurses enter the healthcare field to begin with:  

• Acknowledge suffering: Caregivers should acknowledge that patients are suffering and show them that they care. 

• Body language matters: Body language is as important as the words we use. 
• Anxiety is suffering: Anxiety and uncertainty are negative outcomes that must be addressed. 
• Care should be coordinated: Patients need to know that their care is coordinated and continuous, and that providers are always there for them. 
• Autonomy reduces suffering: Autonomy preserves patient dignity. 
• Real caring transcends medical diagnoses: Real caring goes beyond delivery of medical interventions to the patient. 

Debunked within Visionary Leadership in Healthcare, a frequent misperception is that the focus of patient experience work is to make the patient “happy,” when, in reality, it is about making patients feel safe under the care of the organization.  

Data measures, such as likelihood to recommend and rating the hospital on a scale of one to 10, prove to be an integral part of the patient’s 360-degree view of their experience of care, providing organizations with a better understanding of where their improvement opportunities lie.  

“The AI-enabled insights that Press Ganey can obtain are unlike anything else in the industry. Our AI allows us to quickly and effectively pull key themes out of patient feedback and formulate actionable insights,” said Guney. “Through our work, we see that patients value the caring behaviors more than the knowledge of the nursing staff.” 

Named to multiple Amazon’s Best Sellers in Nursing Lists, Visionary Leadership in Healthcare is available for purchase for $59.95 at SigmaMarketplace.org/SigmaBooks and on Amazon.com.