Location change triggered a slump in team morale

Ye Mao, deputy Party secretary and chair of the trade union at the Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital East Area

The Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital East Area, one of the most respected medical institutions in the city, was established in 2012 as a topgrade facility.

However, after two years we discovered that there had been a change in morale among members of staff, which made the team unstable.

The hospital is located in the eastern suburbs, about 75 kilometers from the city center, and the surrounding area was quite barren in the first few years. About 25 percent of the medical staff transferred from our headquarters in Xuhui district, while the rest were recruited from across the country.

It was particularly difficult for those from outside of Shanghai because they were mostly about age 40, which meant they were at their prime in terms of climbing the career ladder and well-known in their local medical circles. They probably felt different at a new hospital in a suburb where there were fewer patients to treat.

Some had been star doctors at their previous hospitals and had plenty of opportunities to display their professional capabilities. The number of patients at our hospital was relatively small for the first two years, so there were fewer opportunities for the new surgeons to perform major surgery.

Those who came from our headquarters may also have felt differ- ent because many were used to receiving an average of 50 patients on a normal working morning, and they were always surrounded by patients, which gave them an absolute sense of value. By contrast, here they were only visited by about 10 patients every morning.

The younger doctors also had concerns; one told me he felt his professional skills could not match those of former classmates who had opted to work at the headquarters after graduation three years before.

Some staff members were also concerned by the fact that they had no accurate guide for their career path because about 75 percent of the medical team had less than three years’ work experience.

At the start of 2014, we decided to work with psychological counselors, and initiated an employee assistance program to provide team members with regular lectures and morale-boosting activities to relieve the pressure and look for ways of improving doctor-patient relationships and communication.