Showing gratitude is important in every part of our lives. We want to show gratitude to our loved ones, our employees, our friends, and also the people who perform important and even life-saving actions in our lives.
Our healthcare providers can be our allies, and they can be people that we turn to in scary moments in our lives. Even outside of personal health situations, healthcare workers around the world have felt serious strain since the start of the pandemic, yet they’ve continued to work selflessly.
If you’ve ever wanted to show appreciation to healthcare providers either for your personal care or just in general, the following are eight ways to do so.
1. Create Gift Bags
If you or a loved one has had a recent hospital stay, or you have a team at a doctor’s office that’s particularly special to you, you might consider creating gift bags for them. You can add little items that they might be able to use on the job, like the best pens for nurses, doctors, and other care providers. You could also add some fun things, like reusable water bottles or maybe a coffee mug.
It doesn’t have to be anything too expensive—just try to add items that are going to be useful and show you’re thinking of them.
2. Say Thank You
Sometimes the simplest ways to show gratitude are the best. Plus, when we show gratitude, it has benefits for our health and wellness and other people’s.
Just saying thank you can indicate to the people you know who are healthcare providers that you appreciate them and you see everything they’re doing.
If you’ve ever been in a medical setting for any period of time, you’ve likely seen that it’s stressful, fast-paced, emotionally charged, and doesn’t always lend itself to gratitude or positive emotions, but you can change that.
Along with saying thank you in person, you can write a note by hand and send it to the office or hospital where the care provider works, or you can send it through a patient portal.
Greeting cards and handmade cards go a long way too.
If you aren’t sure how to get a note to someone, if you have a family member who’s still in the hospital, the easiest path is probably giving it to them directly. You can also add the office or hospital’s address and then the name of the specific staff member, or you can mail a thank you note or letter to an entire group. For example, you could address it to the nursing staff on the labor and delivery floor and then add the hospital’s address.
There’s also no time limit as far as when you send a card or note. You might be in the midst of a health crisis for a while, so you wait until you’re recovered. Other people like to send a note on an anniversary that’s important to them, like a certain anniversary that celebrates them being cancer-free.
3. Be Careful with Your Language
When you’re showing appreciation to health care workers, realize there are many of them who don’t like being called angels or heroes. We tend to use those words for medical providers, but they’re professionals, and they’re doing their job. That can make them feel uncomfortable if they’re spoken about as a hero or something similar. It can also feel dehumanizing for some people.
4. Post a Review
It can sound a little funny to leave a review for a healthcare provider, but just like there are review sites for other types of businesses, doctors and medical professionals are often reviewed on professional sites too.
If you want to show gratitude for the care someone provided you, look them up online and see if there are any places where you can add a review.
Healthgrades or Doximity are two examples where doctors receive reviews. That way, not only will they likely see that you appreciate them but other patients and colleagues will be able to see it too.
5. Buy Coffee
Whether you’re going to visit a doctor who you see regularly and you want to treat his office to a coffee, or you have a loved one in the hospital who has a particularly great nurse or care provider, maybe you volunteer to buy them a coffee. You can ask what they prefer. Sometimes as busy professionals, health care providers can get busy to the point that getting their own cup of coffee isn’t an option, so having someone hand deliver it can go a long way.
6. Donate On Their Behalf
If there’s a charity you know your healthcare provider feels is special to them, or you have one in mind, you can donate on their behalf. You can let them know you’ve made the donation in their name.
7. Give Them Food
We all like to have delicious snacks and food, and health care providers aren’t an exception. There are many ways you can go about giving food to your health care providers. One way is to simply bring them snacks, like baked goods, that everyone in the office or on the floor can enjoy.
You could also pay to cater a lunch for everyone who works in the office one day, or you can make them a meal.
Just make sure to check that it’s okay before you do so, but most healthcare providers work long hours and are happy to have a meal they might not have been planning on.
8. Gift Certificates
Finally, when you have a special healthcare provider in your life, in any capacity, you probably realize they don’t always take time for themselves. Their jobs are demanding, and even outside of work, they probably have families and other things that take their attention away from their own well-being.
If you get to know a nurse, doctor, or another provider well enough, you might want to show gratitude by getting them a gift certificate so they can take care of themselves, like a massage or pedicure gift certificate.