Successfully delivering healthcare projects is a huge task, one that takes a committed and collaborative team to produce the best outcome for patients. As the leader of the team, the Project Manager is critical to the success of a project: motivating, supporting, and empowering team members to create an extraordinary patient experience.
Team wellness is essential for effective performance, and it is the Project Manager’s responsibility to ensure their team are working at their best. Keeping the team healthy and happy is a major contributor to achieving this, but how can team wellness be reached?
Keeping an Eye on Why
During your project, it’s important to keep the end goal of the healthcare facility in mind. Architects and engineers generally focus on the functional aspects of a space, whereas other team members may be concerned about the budget, the site layout, or future building maintenance. Helping all members of your team to focus on the end goal – such as facilitating healing, safety, family participation, and communication – will ensure that the team understand the design intentions.
Gathering everyone’s input leads to the best ideas
Also, take note of any suggestions from your team: you would be surprised how empowered they will feel when they see their ideas being listened to and put into practice. For example, if overcrowding in the hospital lobby is a problem during peak times and the team suggests separating patients out into separate entrances as a solution, seeing this being incorporated into the design will build their trust and confidence.
Project Manager Self-Care
As the heart of the project team, you are the person who solves everyone’s problems. Because you are the one supporting everyone else, it’s unlikely that anyone is asking how you are coping. Give yourself the time and space to honestly answer the question: are you okay?
If the answer is no, consider what the next step is, whether that’s increased delegation, better prioritization, managing stakeholder expectations, or just learning to say no. Perhaps it’s personal, such as needing more time for fitness or nutrition. Keeping yourself strong emotionally, mentally, and physically puts you in the best possible place to support your team, giving you the ability to see the wisdom of collective thought.
Finding Common Ground
The Project Manager is the key to helping the team find common ground despite competing aims, objectives, and viewpoints. The three principles of the Health Well Done approach – Healthy Patient, Healthy Team, and Healthy Project – give you the tools to identify what this common ground is.
Finding common ground within the project team gives you the best chance of delivering a successful project.
The Healthy Team principle helps you establish trust with your team, enhancing communication and collaboration to deliver a patient-centered facility. Within this culture, the team is able to consider patient needs and propose optimum solutions to facilitate healing, supporting the Healthy Patient principle. Once you have a collaborative environment and a shared goal, you can put a structure and process in place to keep your project on track – supporting the final principle of a Healthy Project and giving your project the best chance of success.
Team wellness is the foundation of a successful healthcare project, so follow these tips to develop a thriving project team focused on delivering excellent patient-centered care. And if you’d like to know more about the Health Well Done approach, you can find more information and get in touch with me here.
