Caritas Certification Program Impact on Human Services Leadership

Abstract

Health care organizations have a hidden treasure within their acute care settings that can expand the ability to improve the experiences of care by achieving improved team engagement of the second-largest workforce. On average, there is 10 minutes per patient per day that our Environmental (ES) and Food Service (FS) teams spend interacting with our patients and families. Applying Watson's Human Caring Theory and Caritas processes (Watson,2009) beginning at leadership levels in ES increased team engagement and improved patient experience. This hidden team benefited from understanding of caring in a professional framework and integration as a valued member of the care team as a partner in humanizing the care we offer. Addition of Watson Caritas Human Caring questions to the organizations’ team engagement and patient experience surveys provided data that demonstrated increased Caritas Processes adoption on self-rating scores and Caring leadership behaviors in four of five measures and improved team engagement in four of the five Watson Caritas Human Caring questions