Promoting a culture of collaboration between point-of-care clinicians and industry partners

Abstract

Interdisciplinary patient-centric collaboration extends beyond the boundaries of hospital walls to include industry partners. Point-of-care clinicians utilizing patient-monitoring technology routinely interface with manufacturer technical support teams for advising, troubleshooting, and problem-solving for issues related to product and patient monitoring. Clinical inquiries can range from simple alarm settings to complex problems such as accuracy of hemodynamic parameters. Customer service center calls require a high level of communication and collaboration between the point-of-care clinician and the technical support representative to ensure an appropriate, timely intervention, and positive patient outcome. Collaborative customer service in healthcare encompasses factors beyond product and technical expertise to include clinical knowledge, facilitative interaction tools, leadership skills, business intelligence, and emotional intelligence. Traditionally, medical device technical customer support centers are staffed by product specialists that possess technical expertise but lack formal clinical training and/or customer context understanding, resulting in frequent call referrals to clinical specialists and a potential delay in delivery of care. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive research study was to analyze the nature of customer calls placed to a patient-monitoring clinical application specialist, and identify interventions that promote a culture of collaboration and shared ownership of decisions at the point-of-care customer service interface.