Walt Disney Meets Walter Reed
Trying Some Disney Attitude to Help Cure Walter Reed
A year after a scandal erupted over the long-term treatment of soldiers at the hospital, the Army has turned to Disney for help. “Service, Disney Style” is newly required for all military and other government employees at Walter Reed.
The Army is paying Disney $800,000 to help revamp attitudes at the hospital.
Other government and military entities — among them the FBI, the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office, which handles the nation’s reconnaissance satellites — have trained with Disney… The Navy hired Disney about 10 years ago to improve its medical service… Customer service ratings improved.Disney is “sort of a benchmark on how to work with customers…“
The Walter Reed employees learned the Disney lexicon. Employees are called “cast members.” Customers — or patients — are “guests.”
Then it was on to what Lafferty called the “Disney difference”: “You have to know and understand your guests.”
Despite initial skepticism, many come out of the training with positive feedback.
“This is good,” said Jan Yatsko, head nurse for vascular surgery at the hospital. “It’s not what we expected.”
Navy Lt. J.D. Garbrecht, a physical therapist who treats multi-trauma patients, said the seminar was a useful reminder of the need to combat the “one-size-fits-all” mentality that often pervades Walter Reed.
It is the “one-size-fits-all” mentality embodies within governmental entities that has put Walter Reed in the situation that has caused the need for the Magic Kingdom intervention. Governments by definition is a serious of regulations and guidelines which have to be followed ensuring conformity. But if medical workers whose primary job description is the care of others are so inflexible that they must be taught to be attuned to the individual needs of those under their care, then more than a little pixie dust is needed to fix the problem at Walter Reed.
