How much difference can a tiny card make in the delivery of health services? Caregivers at Parrish Medical Center in Titusville, Fla, Mercy Gilbert Hospital in Arizona and St. Joseph Home Health Services in Southern California are finding out. Each organization has launched the Touch Card Program(tm) and each is meeting with instant success.
Ideas like this work in Healing Hospitals and charities because the environments welcome innovation. Each organization has created their own example based on the same, core idea. At Mercy Gilbert, CEO Laurie Eberst handed the idea to her Chief Nursing Officer. Soon, a card like the one in the picture above emerged by the doorways of patient rooms. What a beautiful message to give to caregivers – to stop a moment and touch the card before washing their hands and entering the patient’s room. To remember the sacred nature of work…
So how does the card help? The pause means that ever caregiver is taking an instand to recenter on mission before entering the room. The patient in the room is not a gall bladder but a human being. And the person entering the room is more than a temperature-taker. The idea couldn’t be simpler. But only three organizations have thus far shown the wisdom and the courage to implement this culture-changing effort.
At Parrish Medical Center, CEO George Mikitarian, with his usual speed at implementing good ideas at America’s top-ranked Healing Hospital, worked with his team in designing a card similar to the one in this picture. They decided they only needed the image in the center to symbolize the trinity of symbols that mark Radical Loving Care – The Golden Thread of the healing tradition, the intersecting circles of the Sacred Encounter, and Servant’s Heart. The nice thing about this is that each caregiver is taught the significance of the symbol without words.
The prize for artistic intricacy goes to Liz Wessel and her colleagues at St. Joseph Home Health Services in Southern California. If you click on this image you will see four illustrations of a mandala Liz created to be the Touch Card. The mandala weaves together in more detail so much of the teaching of Sacred Work.
I am advised that Covenant Health System in Lubbock, Texas will be putting in place a Touch Card as well. But you don’t have to wait for your organization to make a decision. I have copied one of these cards and taped it to my own doorway to touch as I enter and leave – a reminder to myself about loving care. You can do the same by picking one of these and copying it for your own use.
Perhaps you will decide to make the extra effort to implement this program in your organization. All we ask is that you let us know what you’re doing so that we may share your best practice with other hospitals.
What each of these organizations have accomplished with their implementation is a beautiful recogntion of how small things can help us remember the big idea we need to live in our lives. We are all susceptible to forgetting. The Touch Card is a lovely reminder.
Congratulations to Parrish, Mercy Gilbert, and St. Joe’s Home Health Services on being the first three organizations in the United States to implement the Touch Card program. How lucky to be caregiver at such an organization – and even to be a patient!
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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