When my daughter was 2 years old, she was diagnosed with a peanut allergy. At the office visit, the doctor told me, simply, “Avoid ethnic foods,” and scooted me out the door. I left—scared, anxious and thinking there had to be more information that I needed to know. I immediately searched Dr. Google for answers (and changed pediatricians).

Every interaction that patients have with their doctors, nurses and others in the hospital—whether in-person or online—makes an impression. Are you paying attention to what matters to ensure that your impression is a positive, long-lasting one?

T. Berry Brazelton understood the value of connecting with his patients—and their parents

T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., had an extraordinary knack for interpreting the needs of infants and young children. But his greatest gift may have been the ability to zero in on the stress and anxiety of American parents, offering them just the right dose of comfort, acknowledgement and information.

All without ever really telling them what to do.

“I do not believe in telling people how to parent,” he once told me during an interview. “I don’t like parenting courses. I don’t think they really serve a purpose, and, in a way, they are negative. They say, ‘We know how to do it and you don’t.’

“I would rather expose what’s going on with the child and then what’s going on with the parent, and let them put the two together and see how to make sense of it.”

With Brazelton’s passing yesterday (2 months shy of his 100th birthday), children, parents, pediatricians and child development experts worldwide have lost a beloved caregiver and advocate. Following on the heels of revered child development expert Benjamin Spock, M.D., Brazelton has been called the nation’s last great parenting icon.

As the marketing team responsible for UNC REX Healthcare’s maternity service line, we’re constantly looking for better ways to improve women’s birth experiences at our hospital.

For most patients, their first time at our hospital is when they come to take a birth class in their third trimester, or when they are in labor and arrive to deliver. That means we have to earn their trust months before they actually use our services. Part of our strategy for improving patient experience includes reaching out to future patients to provide education and answer their care questions as early in their pregnancy journey as we can.

In the past year, we’ve made some improvements that have allowed us to connect with a larger percentage of these women, and sooner—as early as their first OB visit to community practices who deliver at the REX Women’s Center.

American healthcare is one of the last industry holdouts when it comes to fully embracing digitization. McKinsey Global Institute has ranked healthcare 19^th out of 22 sectors in its oft-cited Industry Digitization Index.

Even as health systems implement digital health tools and practices, many of these technologies remain separate, leading to a disconnected patient experience.

But there is hope for the digitization of healthcare! Many digital health tools are designed to automatically link information from different digital sources, creating efficiencies that result in a better experience for patients and better workflows for staff.