Our Commitment to the Patient Experience

We offer our staff training programs that are designed to prioritize the patient experience at UI Health Care and increase staff engagement.

Provider Communication Program

The Provider Communication Program was brought to UI Health Care in 2017 in partnership with the Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH). This training program teaches a series of techniques including how to organize a clinic visit and effective communication strategies with patients and families. Our facilitators emphasize the importance of alleviating anxiety and suffering in the patient experience.

UI Health Care currently has 14 in-house certified facilitators who have trained over 800 providers. We are one of few hospitals in the nation that offer the services of patient experience coaches following the provider’s completion of the 5-hour workshop. Coaches shadow providers in their clinical setting where they partner to provide mentoring and feedback regarding best practices and celebrate successes.

Compassionate Connected Care

C3 Inpatient

The C3 Program is provided for all frontline staff who interact directly with patients and families. The program emphasizes effective communication strategies, teamwork, and how to identify emotion and use skills appropriately to respond with empathy to patient needs in the hospital setting.

This 4-hour group training session is facilitated and led by our patient experience coaches. Each unit within the hospital is also assigned a coach to assist with initiatives aimed at enhancing staff engagement and the overall patient experience.

As of Spring of 2020, all UI Health Care inpatient units have completed this program. Since its start, our coaches have trained over 3,000 UI Health Care employees. We excitedly continue to train all new hires in partnership with our Nursing Education office.

C3 Ambulatory

The C3 Ambulatory Program is the newest substantial addition to our training offerings. Launched in Spring 2021, this training program was built from the ground up by our own UI Health Care staff to align with the specific needs of patients in our ambulatory care setting.

Like our inpatient program, C3 Ambulatory focuses on improved communication and delivering patient care with empathy and compassion. What makes this program unique is that each C3 tool and skill is tailored to the outpatient setting. This means all content is relevant to staff that care for our patients and families in our clinics.

We are steadily expanding this patient experience coach led 4-hour training across all of UI Health Care’s ambulatory services. As each clinic’s staff completes training, a patient experience coach is assigned as a partner to help innovate and implement strategies that will enhance and sustain the patient experience.