The Person-Centered Approach

Abstract

TCW E WOULD probably all agree that the persons who enter our hospitals as patients are very important people and that the hospitals exist primarily to provide service for these members of our communities. The persons who give this service are also important people. Even though it becomes increasingly difficult to find personnel for our hospitals, there are still many hospitals where the mental climate is poor and the interpersonal relations are not the kind that attract personnel and help to keep them on a job. It would require less than an hour a day spent in locker rooms, in hospital corridors, and in homes to discover whether the workers in these institutions liked or disliked, respected or disrespected the individuals in administrative positions. At a conference on careers in hospitals, representatives of many of the professions allied to medicine told about such vocational opportunities in hospitals as nursing, physical therapy, medical technology, dietetics, and pharmacy. The speakers presented attractive and interesting activities in these fields but they did not describe the hospitals' personnel policies. When the question of personnel policies was raised, the chairman said that the purpose of the meeting was to describe only the work and the related opportunities in hospital fields. This approach to recruitment and the failure to give a complete picture of what the life of a hospital worker is really like may explain some of our personnel turnover and shortages. What do the schools, the hospitals, or the public gain if persons who are sincerely interested in hospital careers, but who are not informed about the total situation, enter our doors, become disillusioned, and depart? This produces the poorest type of public relations-yet in some hospitals it happens daily. Like some teachers who focus emphasis on subject matter rather than on the students who are learning, there are hospital officials who often focus attention on the work which needs to be done and neglect to demonstrate respect for their co-workers as human beings. Each worker, regardless of his area of duty, is first a person. His work is but one expression of the effort of the whole individual.