If you’re wired anything like me, you’re built to “size up” new people pretty quickly.

It’s human nature. When we meet people, first impressions really do matter. We tend to get attached to our initial impressions and, even when presented with evidence to the contrary, we can resist changing our mind. If we make a negative first impression, we can lose business opportunities and even compromise personal relationships. There is much to be gained from being aware of ourselves and monitoring our instinctive responses.

This is particularly true in global healthcare. Because cultural differences often involve unfamiliar dynamics, we need to be especially alert to the power of first impressions and intrinsic bias. Moreover, if we intend to make a positive first impression, we must do our homework and learn how our particular host culture expresses goodwill and collegiality.

From my travels in Eastern cultures, for example, my experience is one’s hosts take extra care to convey respect and that their guest is important. They establish eye contact—but not too much eye contact. They extend gestures of respect with tactful restraint.

In contrast, my natural tendency—perhaps typical of many Americans—is to be somewhat low-key and even casual when meeting someone. Over the course of my travels, I’ve learned that to make a positive first impression, I sometimes need to lean away from informality and instead be more formal and gracious.

On a recent trip to Abu Dhabi, and specifically at the Pure Health headquarters, the way I was met by the team and the overall experience they created reignited in me an appreciation for the impact of first impressions on building and owning our personal first impression, forming our perception of others and ultimately instilling an experience within our business culture that benefits our patients and partners.

Once we appreciate the power of first impressions, we have our work cut out for us: How do we integrate this awareness into our organizational culture?

As a people-centered enterprise, Cedars-Sinai continuously monitors patient and provider feedback. We strive to differentiate between the experience we believe we have created and how each person actually perceives their experience with us. Whether with patients or business partners, our emphasis is on perception: How does each person feel about their time with us?

Our Cedars-Sinai Patient Experience team, led by Alan Dubovsky, focuses on capturing the patient voice in so many ways, with over 150,000 completed surveys to Patient and Family Advisor groups. The power of data and real-time feedback helps us strive for and manifest outstanding patient experiences.

Because first impressions are formed in a matter of seconds, elevating how our patients experience their initial encounter with us can be quite challenging. During his presentation at the 2022 World Hospital Congress in Dubai, Dr. Hariprasad Kovelamudi reported on feedback his team gathered at Apollo Hospitals in India. He shared a telling insight: As a general rule, when a patient is sharing their concerns, they need 29 seconds to feel heard. On average, however, patients are interrupted 11 seconds after they begin speaking. The takeaway was invaluable: A few extra seconds of listening can make a world of difference.

And of course, timing is just one piece of the puzzle. Body language, tone of voice, choice of words, eye contact and other factors all impact how the patient feels when they are meeting a caregiver. Is the caregiver attentive? Empathetic? Responsive? Everything we do—or fail to do—during those first moments makes a difference.

Mindful of those factors, Cedars-Sinai International embarked a year ago on elevating our patient and visitor experience by opening the CSI lounge and launching our concierge services, with a robust team of experts bridging the high-touch service of the hospitality industry with the caring and compassionate ethos of healthcare—all centered around our patients and their caregivers.

Chances are your experience around customer service is similar to ours at Cedars-Sinai. We are making progress toward a unified program that delivers the experience our patients expect and demand—and we know we have a long way to go. How do we onboard new employees and equip them to interact with patients, colleagues and business partners, handle difficult situations and create positive and productive interactions? These are all critically important tools we will refine and expand in the months and years to come.

Achieving optimal patient satisfaction is a layered, complex challenge to be sure, but it is a challenge we should embrace wholeheartedly. As professionals committed to improving global healthcare, let’s double-down on every effort aimed at creating the best possible experience for the people in our care, our teammates and our business partners.