Telephone Excellence by Mike Mitchell

Cultivating Our Own Lawns
By Mike Mitchell

Drive down any residential street in America and you'll see a wide range of neighborhood lawns. You can easily tell which homeowner puts the time and effort into keeping his lawn meticulously manicured. The grass is always cut to the proper height, the shrubs are shaped, and the walkways neatly trimmed. Perhaps a flowerbed or rock garden graces the landscape.

In the same way a homeowner is judged by the appearance of his yard, telecom is also judged by its efforts and the appearance of its equipment in the hospital. Is telecom's commitment readily apparent to patients, their families, hospital employees, and the administration?

Although people may not notice our every endeavor, our end results manifest our efforts. Just as the homeowner must cultivate the lawn before seeing any effect, in telecom we must run riser and station cables, install routers, hubs, patch panels, and cross connects, and install telephone and terminal equipment before hospital communication can run smoothly.

As with the homeowner's neat and well-kept lawn, our patients and visitors should see a clean and well-maintained telephone or PC sitting atop the receptionist's desk or at the patient information station. Hospital employees should notice in-house telephones in good repair, voice/data jacks securely attached to the wall and properly labeled, correct designations of all telephones, wireless devices that don't drop the connection, five 9s of reliable voice/data network uptime, and much more.

Unlike the beautiful lawn which stands out on a street of average lawns, our "beautiful" networks and equipment are not so readily appreciated. Even though our patients and co-workers might not openly marvel at the technology we've provided for them, we should never give less than our best effort.

Our efforts will be apparent when, during an emergency or a life-and-death situation, every system performs flawlessly.

-Mike