“Once you empower people to think and bring their best self to work, they will often come up with ideas.”

“You never know where the next good idea is going to come from and if you’re not open to hearing it, you may miss it.”

“Saying “how might we…” it allows people to take risks and to think about things in a different way. And to offer up an idea that might seem a little crazy in the beginning, because they know they’re not going to be ridiculed for it. And if it’s not a great idea, we’ll just move on to the next one. And we have found that there have been so many examples of employees coming up with solutions to challenges.”

“We give our employees time—paid time—where they can go volunteer and help out in the hospital. And it creates an understanding of how every single employee can have an impact on what we do here. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in finance in IS or any other area, you can either make the patient’s day better, their family’s day better, or one of your coworkers.”

“Because of the work that happens at Cincinnati Children’s all the time, we have the ability to impact lives everywhere around the world. And that’s really what I wanted was to have that kind of impact.”

“I do round every day and I try to go to a different area. I walk through our concourse, which is sort of the main through way through the hospital. It’s always full of energy.”

“I love watching our employees notice that somebody might be lost—they don’t just sit there and watch them. They actually go up and say, “Miss, can I help you?” And they don’t then just say, “well, take two lefts and then take the next elevator to the third floor.” They’ll walk them to the help desk or to where they want to go. And I love seeing that, and I try to find out the name of the employee who did something like that so I can send them a note.”

“It reminds me of why I went into healthcare. I wanted to have an impact on families. I get to see every day what our people do for patients and their families, and I also get to see where we could be better.”

“If you really want to put patients first, you have to surround them with great employees. And if your employees aren’t in a good condition to take care of your patients you’re not going to be able to achieve what you want.”

“If you’re given an opportunity to work on something, say yes. Even if you’re not sure if it’s something you’re interested in, because oftentimes you think you know what you’re interested in and you don’t.”

“I encourage people, don’t narrow your focus too early. You don’t know what you’re going to end up doing. Get as much experience as you can. And then once you are a little farther along in your career, then you can start narrowing your focus a little bit.”