I was at a laboratory conference
recently and again went through the ever-present hand-to-heart, sonorous syrup
voicing “We have great respect for you, our staff, for all you do. You are our most important internal customer”.
To which I say “bull-pucky” !!
Before you get the wrong
message, I will be clear beyond clear:
Laboratory staff is essential to laboratory operations and function and
culture. This rant is in no way intended
to suggest or imply anything other than the critical role laboratory workers
play.
It is the term “internal
customer” that gets my ire; it is both meaningless and trite.
The term customer is well
defined as a person (or organization) that has a use or interest in our product
of services. Customers may (usually) pay
a fee for use, and often (but not necessarily) have a choice of supplier. Importantly Philip Crosby pointed out the
very definition of Quality is the degree to which we meet the NEEDS (as opposed
to the “wants”) of the customer.
Put together we have a good
sense of who a customer and what they should be able to expect from us.
In exchange for a fee we must meet their needs
and expectations (within the limits of the product). If we can do that we can
say that we have met the needs of Quality and perhaps earned the opportunity
for a repeat customer.
We can monitor our customers
to determine their degree of satisfaction with our actions through satisfaction
surveys, or received comments, or complaints monitoring, all of which gives a
picture, but never is as good as monitoring repeat business.
There are a bunch of definitions
for “internal customers”; most typically “a co-worker, another department, or a
distributor who depends upon us to provide products or services which in turn
are utilized to create a deliverable for the external customer.
Examples might be the sales department, or the
accounting department as a customer of manufacturing.
Interesting, and maybe
relevant to some industries, but it is hardly applicable to what happens in a
laboratory.
Calling our laboratory staff
our internal customer is just an incorrect and nonsense use of a wrong term.
There are certain situations
where staff are justifiably very interested in the results of certain
laboratory tests. Staff should be aware
when there is an increased risk of communicable disease or toxic chemicals
within their vicinity. That doesn’t mean
they have a right to breach patient confidentiality, but they should be made
aware of the accessibility of potential risk factors.
So I have come up with a classification
table that defines three levels of “customers” that works really well in the
medical laboratory setting but does not use the term internal or external. I strongly advocate for adoption.
Medical
Laboratory Customers are individuals who directly or indirectly
order or use or services including our generation of information. These customers are either clinicians
(doctors, nurse practitioners) or patients.
These customers, depending on the medical services system may nor may
not pay a fee and may or may not have a choice of supplier.
Medical
Laboratory Interested Parties are individuals who are not
customers but have a definite interest in results. These may include patient friends or family
or community contacts, or laboratory/institution contacts (such as nurses,
technicians, housekeepers, visitors etc.) who may be at risk of certain exposures. It may include Public Health workers whose
job it is to do further follow-up.
Medical
Laboratory Stakeholders are individuals or groups who have work
necessity to be aware of activities or risks within the organization and their
potential impacts. This might include
(but not be limited to) institutional administration, media services, legal and
liability services, union stewards.
This classification works on
many levels. It makes the point that
direct users of our information and service have a special connection with us
and we have a special responsibility for them.
Second it highlights that our customers can have impact on many that
surround them and we have a responsibility that they too are protected from
harm. Third, it acknowledges that there
are others that have a “need to know” even if they don’t need to know a lot of
details.
Customers, Interested
Parties, Stakeholders… and NO Internal Customers.
How good is that!!!
