What is a Patient & Family Advisor?

A Patient and Family Advisor is someone who wants to help improve the quality of our hospital’s care for all patients and family members.

Patient Family Advisors often give feedback to the hospital based on their own experiences as a patient or family member.

  • Helps us plan changes to improve how we take care of patients
  • Works with the hospital for either short- or long-term commitments, depending on the project
  • Volunteers his or her time typically (usually at least 1 hour and not more than 4 hours per month)

Patient and family advisers provide a voice that represents all patients and families of patients who receive care at South Central Kansas Medical Center.

They partner with hospital doctors, nurses, and administrators to help improve the quality of our hospital’s care for all patients and family members.

Becoming a patient family advisor.

When you or your family member was in the hospital, did you think there were things we could have done better? Do you have ideas about how to make sure other patients and families get the best care possible?

At South Central Kansas Medical Center, patient and family advisors give us feedback and ideas to help us improve the quality and safety of care we provide.

Patient family advisor benefits

You can be an advisor if you or a family member received care at South Central Kansas Medical Center in the last 5 years. You do not need any special qualifications to be an advisor. What’s most important is your experience as a patient or family member. We will provide you with any other training you need.

What do patient family advisors do?

If you are an adviser for our hospital, you can help us in the following ways:

  • Share your story.  Advisers help by talking about their health care experiences with clinicians, staff, and other patients.
  •  Participate in discussion groups. Advisers tell us what it’s like to be a patient at our hospital and what we can do to improve.
  • Review or help create educational or informational materials. Advisers help review or create materials like forms, health information handouts, and discharge instructions. Advisers help us make these materials easier for all patients and family members to understand and use.
  • Work on short-term projects. We sometimes ask advisers to partner with us in making improvements — for example, helping to plan and design a family resource room.
  • Serve on a patient and family advisory council. An advisory council discusses and plans changes to improve hospital quality and safety. Members include patients, family members, and hospital staff.

What it takes to be a patient family advisor:

Being a patient and family adviser, being able to speak up and share suggestions and potential solutions to help improve hospital care for others. Being able to share your experiences and show empathy are critical to being an effective patient family advisor.

Talking about both positive and negative care experiences and sharing your thoughts on what went well and how things could have been done differently can help patients understand what they’re going through. 

You’ll have the opportunity to work with people from all walks of life, nationalities and creeds.

You’ll need to listen to and think about what others say, even when you disagree. Always bring a positive attitude to discussions and keep any information you may hear as an adviser private and confidential.

Join our team now!

To get more information about becoming an adviser at South Central Kansas Medical Center or to find out how to apply call us now!

(620) 441-5794