Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford Leader Earns Top Certification as Patient Experience Professional

Certification from Patient Experience Institute offers first formal
designation for patient experience professionals

STANFORD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Lucile
Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Children’s Health
announced today that Christine L. Cunningham, director of the Office of
Patient Experience, has earned the credential of Certified Patient
Experience Professional (CPXP) by the Patient
Experience Institute (PXI), a subsidiary of The
Beryl Institute. Cunningham is among the first in the country to
receive this certification, following a rigorous exam, as more
healthcare organizations are recognizing the importance of making
patient experience a focal point of care.

Cunningham launched the Office of Patient Experience in January 2012,
after her own daughter’s surgery as an infant reconfirmed her belief
that patients and families needed advocates within the healthcare
system. Cunningham decided to leave her career as an executive in
medical device marketing to join Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
Stanford as its first director of the Office of Patient Experience and
has since grown the department to 25 employees.

With a mission to amplify the patient and family voice, facilitate
hospital navigation and restore the human connection to healthcare, the
Office of Patient Experience, under Cunningham’s leadership, launched
organization-wide efforts to enhance the patient experience. These
efforts were specifically designed to remove obstacles to care, to
incorporate patients’ feedback, and to train employees to improve
patient experiences.

Programs such as nurse leader rounding, discharge phone calls, Corporate
Partners, MyChart, Experience Intelligence and “patient navigators”
within each department are among the initiatives now implemented through
the Office of Patient Experience. Cunningham is also responsible for
leading PCARES, the hospital’s unique program for guiding communication
and behavior between staff and patients and among staff to create a
welcoming environment with the goal to deliver more compassionate care.
Additionally, she has been an advocate and voice of patients and
families during the planning and execution of a 500,000-square-foot
hospital expansion set to open in 2017.

In addition, Cunningham is active in the Experience Innovation Network,
a patient experience collaborative of 35 hospitals that meet to share
ideas and best practices in the area of patient experience. She has
presented nationally on topics related to the patient experience.

“As the patient experience movement grows, we recognize the important
contribution professionals attaining certification as CPXPs will have.
This designation is significant as it underscores and reinforces the
critical focus on the patient and family experience in today’s
healthcare environment,” said Jason A. Wolf, President, Patient
Experience Institute. “The recipients of this certification represent a
visionary, thoughtful and committed group of individuals focused on
changing the landscape of healthcare for the better.”

CPXP certification is an international designation intended for
healthcare professionals or other individuals with a commitment and
interest in patient experience improvement. Development of the patent
experience professional certification exam followed a rigorous and
standardized process, engaging the voices of over 1,000 members of the
patient experience community globally, according to the Patient
Experience Institute. The process adhered to the Standards for
Education and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014) and Standards
for the Accreditation of Certification Programs (NCCA, 2014).

About Stanford Children’s Health and Lucile Packard Children’s
Hospital Stanford

Stanford Children’s Health, with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
Stanford at its core, is the largest Bay Area health care enterprise
exclusively dedicated to children and expectant mothers. Long recognized
by U.S.
News & World Report as one of America’s best, we are a leader in
world-class, nurturing care and extraordinary outcomes in every
pediatric and obstetric specialty, with care ranging from the routine to
rare, regardless of a family’s ability to pay. Together with our Stanford
Medicine physicians, nurses, and staff, we can be accessed through
partnerships, collaborations, outreach, specialty clinics and primary
care practices at more than 60 locations in Northern California and 100
locations in the U.S. western region. As a non-profit, we are committed
to supporting our community – from caring for uninsured or underinsured
kids, homeless teens and pregnant moms, to helping re-establish school
nurse positions in local schools. Learn more at stanfordchildrens.org
and on our Healthier,
Happy Lives blog. You can also discover how we are Building
the Hospital of the Future. Join us on Facebook,
Twitter,
LinkedIn
and YouTube.

About Patient Experience Institute

The Patient
Experience Institute (PXI) is an independent, non-profit, 501(c)(3)
organization committed to the improvement of patient experience through
evidence-based research and professional development efforts including
certification and continuing education. PXI’s focus is on providing a
framework for supporting the development of the field of patient
experience in conjunction with its sister organizations, The
Beryl Institute and Patient
Experience Journal.

For more information about PXI and the CPXP designation, visit www.pxinstitute.org

Contacts

Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford
Robert Dicks,
650-497-8364
rdicks@stanfordchildrens.org