Four years ago my dad suffered a series of seizures that significantly impacted his health. His seizures were unusual. Because of the location of a brain tumor, his seizures were hard to detect unless you knew what to look for: confusion, facial droop, and right-side mobility limitations. While my dad’s medical care overall was very good, multiple times during his stay he had seizures that went undetected by nurses even though they saw him during the seizures. Their oversight was not intentional, but it was frustrating nonetheless. 

I began to realize that I could predict which nurses would be on top of my father’s care and detect his seizures and which nurses would miss the seizures. A simple white board with the patient’s name, the date, the patient’s diagnosis, and the names of the hospital staff adorns every hospital and rehab room. Every so often the staff wouldn’t update the whiteboard. I would walk in on a Friday and it would say “Thursday.”

Changing the white board is simple. It doesn’t take the nurse more than a few seconds and you wouldn’t think that it has much to do with a nurse’s competence. But the white board was the canary in the coal mine for the level of care my father was receiving. Attentiveness and details matter in medical care. A nurse who doesn’t pay close attention to a whiteboard doesn’t pay close attention to a patient.

There is a church nearby with a sign in front that displays a message that can be changed. Their information about their Easter services is still up. This missed detail makes the passerby wonder what kind of excellence one finds inside and how much the church cares about the communicating to its surrounding community. Both might not be true, but the impression is hard to shake.

Worse still is a detail that has been overlooked by a sign shop that I drive past every day on my way to the church. On the street corner is a banner with “SIGNS” printed on it. It’s the perfect advertisement: one of their signs advertising their sign shop. Only, the banner began to show significant wear a few years ago. It became badly faded and started getting frayed around the edges about eighteen months ago. Then about nine months ago the top of the banner ripped off the pole and fell to the bottom. And so, every day, I drive by and look at the most embarrassing piece of anti-advertising that anyone could dream up for a sign shop. The owner would be better off to print up all his one-star Yelp reviews and post them on his window than have his product, pathetic and dilapidated, limply hanging on the street corner.

How can we miss such obvious markers? And yet we do.

What is New Life’s whiteboard? Perhaps it is the out-of-date ministry cards in the lobby. Or maybe our bathrooms which can look pretty shabby by the end of a Sunday? Maybe the weeds in our parking lot? I’m not a great detail person (I cringe at the typos and grammatical mistakes that others kindly point out in my blogs), so I totally get nurses who forget updating the date. I can easily miss details. But I must remember what those missed details communicate.

One of the blessings newcomers and new hires provide are their fresh eyes. They are invaluable in helping us see details we have become blind to.

 What is your “date-on-the-whiteboard” as a leader? How can you make sure that you are demonstrating to your clients that you are attending to them, details and all? Don’t forget to change the whiteboard, fellow leaders.

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash