Pediatrics at a tipping point: Designing for trust under pressure

By Chrissy Daniels, Chief Experience Officer, Press Ganey

The pediatric experience has always carried a different weight. We’re not just caring for children—some of our most vulnerable patients, who often can’t advocate for themselves. We’re caring for entire families. We’re helping them navigate fear and uncertainty, and we’re helping them hold space for hope all at once. While clinical excellence is important, ensuring that patients and families feel safe, heard, and supported is important too.

The data tells a powerful story. Access challenges, workforce strain, and fragmentation are testing pediatric healthcare in profound ways. But beneath that pressure, we also find clarity in the data. Clarity around what builds trust. Clarity around what drives loyalty. Clarity around what helps people feel safe.

And at the center of all that is teamwork.

Teamwork is something people can both see and feel

Families don’t view care as a set of isolated interactions or performance metrics. They view it as a coordinated effort—or the absence of one. When teams work seamlessly together to help them and their child, people feel it immediately. And they feel safe. Teamwork, in fact, has emerged as the single strongest driver of “Likelihood to Recommend” (LTR) scores. When teamwork is perceived as strong, 81% of families are highly likely to recommend the care. But when it breaks down? That number drops to 19%.

The connection between teamwork and trust doesn’t stop there. It extends directly into perceptions of safety. While healthcare leaders often define safety through clinical outcomes, for families, it’s also trust made visible. Patients and families have figured us out. They know we are competent and caring individuals, but, when we fail to work together, bad things can happen. They watch how clinicians communicate, how information flows, and whether everyone seems aligned. When those signals are strong, safety feels tangible. When they’re not, doubt creeps in, and oftentimes the burden of coordinating care lands on the shoulders of the family. The consequences extend far beyond the bedside. Patients who feel unsafe are 2.5–3x less likely to recommend care.

Access and coordination are the new front lines

The greatest challenge in pediatric care today goes beyond quality, impacting access and coordination. Access is a clinical issue, a brand issue, and a growth issue. Healthcare is falling short, failing to meet patients and families where they are: Only 58% receive timely care. Access to behavioral health is even more constrained, with 56% getting an appointment within 10 days.

Care quality can’t be separated from access. Put another way, when care’s difficult to access, it’s not good care at all.

This is where the consumer experience and patient experience fully converge. Families navigate healthcare the same way they navigate every other decision: searching online, comparing options, reading reviews, and expecting a streamlined experience each step of the way. When they encounter friction—whether it’s long wait times, scheduling barriers, or fragmented communication—it sends a clear message: This system wasn’t designed with them in mind. And, increasingly, they respond by looking elsewhere.

The future of pediatric care depends on whole-system thinking

As I mentioned at the start, one thing that makes pediatric care uniquely complex is that it’s never just about the patient. It’s a journey that requires coordination across the entire care ecosystem. The child, the family, and the clinical team all must work in partnership.

Far too often, however, these elements are siloed. Families feel those disconnects in the form of inconsistent information, unclear next steps, and gaps in coordination. And care teams feel those fissures too, often shouldering the emotional and operational burden of poorly designed processes and systems.

Our patients and families experience healthcare as a journey—one that demands whole-system thinking. Within that system, consistency becomes the true differentiator. Trust is built on reliability—on knowing what to expect, every time. When care teams check in frequently, experience scores rise. When nurse leaders proactively round on patients, organizations receive 1.45x higher “Likelihood to Recommend” (LTR) scores.

Of course, consistency never happens by accident. It is sustained through social capital, disciplined processes, and leadership. Trust between colleagues. Psychological safety within teams. A shared sense of purpose. These are the invisible forces that allow complex systems to function under pressure.

Leaning into Human Experience healthcare

Patient experience, consumer experience, member experience, safety and workforce experience are an interconnected reality—all woven into the social fabric of healthcare. When we ignore one, we weaken the entire system. That’s why Human Experience must be our organizing framework.

This moment in pediatric healthcare is undeniably challenging. Financial pressures, workforce shortages, and access constraints are real and persistent. But these challenges also bring opportunities sharply into focus. Pediatrics already leads in many aspects of communication, empathy, and teamwork. The question now is whether we can build on that foundation intentionally.

Reimagining pediatric care requires redesign. Designing systems that make teamwork visible. Designing access that is seamless and equitable. Designing care that is consistent, not variable. Designing environments where caregivers feel safe to speak, contribute, and thrive. And most importantly, designing with families—not just for them.

Because at its core, trust is not, and has never been, built through perfection, but through connection. And, in pediatrics, trust is everything.