Sue Murphy, Chief Experience Officer, University of Chicago Medicine, Chapter 1

The word ‘audit’ has never conjured up a positive image. No one wants to be audited — especially nurses, who already face a tremendous burden being the front line of patient care. The last thing they need to worry about is receiving poor ratings from the individuals for whom they’re providing care. What both nurses and patients needed was a way to facilitate productive conversations, and so University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine has done just that. For the past four years, the organization has partnered with Vocera to provide a more accurate care picture for providers and help them access information in more efficient ways. The result? A more open, honest dialogue with patients.

In this interview, Sue Murphy talks about how the organization has transformed rounding and discharge procedures to improve the patient experience, and how they’re leveraging data to continue to tweak those processes. She also discusses the critical role CXOs play in building and maintaining strong relationships across departments, how she utilizes the tactics she learned as a nurse to care for caregivers, and why social media has truly “changed the world for patients.”

Chapter 1



* CXO’s role in “creating exceptional experiences”

* Teaching, training & mentoring

* The “ongoing journey” of building relationships across departments

* Working w/ Vocera to “capture the patient’s voice”

* Less rounding, more conversations

* Shared decision-making with patients: “Instead of doing it to them, we’re doing it with them.”

* Avoiding the ‘audit’ mentality

* “We’re not looking for negativity.”



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Bold Statements

Everyone who goes into healthcare, no matter what role they’re in, has a story — something that helps drive them to get into the job they’re doing to care for others. If you care for those who are caring for others, it becomes contagious.

We all have our silos, but having collegial, professional, and caring relationships with other departments helps us get to the outcome we want. And so our team spends a lot of time building those relationships; making sure we’re rolling up our sleeves and looking at process improvement.

It’s evolved to where instead of rounding on patients, we call it ‘creating conversations.’ We’re using the technology and working very closely with Vocera Care Experience to say, ‘Instead of having patients audit our behavior, what conversations can we create with patients?

I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t just tell people, ‘Here’s what we want you to do. Go out there and do it,’ and not have them understand their involvement in it.

Gamble:  Hi Sue, thank you so much for joining us. Let’s start with an overview of your role, looking at your main objectives as chief experience officer and kind of what falls under your purview.

Murphy:  My name is Sue Murphy, and I’m chief experience officer at University of Chicago Medicine. My background is in nursing; I’ve been a nurse for about 30 years. That has given me the ability to understand the role of the healthcare provider and the day-to-day operations in caring for others. I’ve been with University of Chicago for six years as the chief experience officer. The role is really about providing oversight and doing everything we can to create exceptional experiences every day for our patients and those that care for them.

I have a department with 36 full-time equivalents who help with wayfinding, understanding the survey process, innovating, and providing training, coaching, and mentoring for those that care for patients to help bring out the best in them, and understand what the experience is like and what engagement occurs. We work with everyone from physicians to nurse...