Is your hospital explaining why employees should care about "Quality"?

You should.

Oh, trust me. I know. It can be tricky to figure how to explain what those measures mean or why employees should care.

So, our marketing staff figured an internal campaign would be a good place to start.

My colleagues put on a Quality event (movie themed) that was the Holy Grail of in-house hospital events--one in which people showed up, grabbed free food, giveaways, learned, and actually cared.

The staff altered actual movie posters (think really high-end forgeries here; no in-house Photoshopping) to fit with our Quality focus. So, instead of "Happy Feet" (animated film about penguins), it was "HAPU Feet" (as in "Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcers"). And so on--with nine different movies--each one more clever than the next (including a riff on the "Knocked Up" poster). Affixed to each poster was a set of readable, easy-to-follow points about each measure.

Employees were asked to answer questions about each poster. If they had all the correct answers, the sheet was thrown into a hat for the chance to win an iPad.

Sure, it could have been the free nachos, soft pretzels, movie candy, the beautiful weather or the lure of the iPad that yielded such a turn-out. But as I hear more feedback from the event itself, I also hear employees saying, "I had no idea that CPOE (computerized physician order entry) cut down on length of stay" and "Did you know that we were rated that high in the STS (Society for Thoracic Surgeons) database?"

I'll be honest--as long as they are talking about Quality, I'm completely okay with having used an iPad to get them there.