Health

will an administrator be able to understand what needs to be done to improve patient care in the hospital in each of their departments.

I'm surprised that this hasn't been instituted a long time ago.

The administrative student should also spend time with patients and their significant others to understand how they feel as they encounter the hospital and its surroundings.

The fear and stress of the patient needs to be understood so that this future health administrator can fully empathize and work to minimize their stress and the stress of the health professionals in the setting that have to deal with patients.

Communication skills are of utmost importance in the health care setting. By making the health administrative student observe how health professionals interact with patients will also go a long way of making that hospital/health care setting. They will be able to see what techniques of communication work and what doesn't work when dealing with a patient.

These Health Care Administration curriculums shouldn't be all business and organizational oriented. The business and organizational aspects of this curriculum should come after the health administrative student has a real appreciation of the patient experience and the health professionals that work in such a setting.

In my work days (I'm retired now) - I taught a course similar to this for pharmacy students. Before I had them step foot in a pharmacy - I wanted them to experience health care from the perspective of the patient and the health professionals that they would be having to work with when they practiced.

It was an eye-opening experience for both the students, the health professionals we placed the students with and myself. It went a long way with transitioning pharmacy education from just 'counting and pouring' to 'clinical and patient centered pharmacy'.