Tune in now to the final Season 4 Moments Move Us episode with Rebecca Coren 🎧
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New Podcast Episode:
Creating Change Through Connection: Leadership Lessons from Season 4 with host Rebecca Coren
As we begin to shift gears toward a post-pandemic world, how do we, as leaders, secure healthy solutions that strengthen healthcare workers’ resiliency? We sat down with five patient experience experts to explore strategies for improving overall well-being within their healthcare systems, and a resounding emphasis was placed on cultivating trust, both with patients, and with staff. Some considerations shared: How can we lead authentically without full transparency? How is trust an important component when it comes to emotional safety? How does taking care of our teams better the patient experience overall? The bottom line: you cannot have a healthy workplace without trust—trust between leaders and their teams, and trust between healthcare teams and their patients and families. Here are five learnings to support more authentic leadership in cultivating trust and improving patient experience outcomes.
Watch the full panel discussion on “How Patient Experience Learnings Can Improve Well-Being.“
Burnout has been at the forefront of many healthcare conversations since . Dr. Adrienne Boissy, Chief Experience Officer at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, noted team members are experiencing more “compassion fatigue” because the demands for care are exceeding their capacity to care. Sven Gierlinger, Chief Experience Officer at Northwell Health in New York City, shared that during the height of the pandemic, he focused more on supporting team members than the patients. The mentality being, that in order to better serve a patient population, support must first be given to the caregivers charged with the provision of care. His team launched Team Lavender, a first aid initiative designed to provide staff timely emotional, physical, and spiritual support. In the pandemic alone, over 300 people completed the well-being training to learn coping mechanisms to better handle crisis, confirming the need for targeted intervention programs. Addressing burnout is critical for boosting morale and demonstrates to staff that their concerns are valid and their contributions are valuable.
Megan Chavez, Vice President of Patient & Family Experience at Cook Children’s Healthcare System in Texas, emphasizes that well-being should be seen as a two-way street. “In a pediatric environment, the staff need to have context of what the child and family is going through.” When thinking of the continuous improvement of the healthcare experience, leaders need to consider where everyone is coming from in order to provide exceptional care experience. Dr. Adrienne Boissy added: “the distinction between patients and caregivers is arbitrary – they are all humans.” Caregiving becomes humanized when more emphasis is placed on the cyclical nature of well-being. As Dwight McBee, Senior Vice President and Chief Experience Officer at Jefferson Health Enterprise, highlighted, “If a team member doesn’t feel safe, they can’t help others feel safe.”
Dr. Adrienne Boissy has been a longtime champion of holistic care. Her authentic leadership style is rooted in a foundation of meaningful care. “When caring for someone, you care for the whole person – physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially.” Holistic care sees the individual as a whole person, and for patients and staff alike to trust leadership, leaders must also be responsible of the emotional safety of those under their administrations. If leaders want to build trust, they must be conduits of promoting healthy partnerships between staff, patients, and themselves.
Our patient experience experts were all in agreement about the significance of trust in the pursuit of authentic leadership. Dwight McBee expressed, “Trust is foundational. And it’s easy to say, but difficult to practice.” As Sven Gierlinger illustrated, “trust doesn’t come from words, it comes from action.” The COVID crisis and the lack of resources, transparency, and procedure, have weakened trust between staff and their leaders/organizations. This exhibits that trust in the workplace can, and has been, depleted. Dr. Amy Mansue, President of Inspira Health Network in New Jersey, suggests, “Should a leader find themselves in a place where trust is broken, the most important thing they can do is to own it.” To acknowledge one’s failures is to acknowledge their team’s frustrations, and expressing vulnerability and humility as a leader is a powerful way to connect with team members.
A climate of trust is built on effective and open communication. Megan Chavez’s approach to cultivate trust starts with knowledge sharing: “Everything we do for our staff either builds, or takes away, from their ability to perform their jobs. So when we do know something, and can do more for them, we must, and we will.” Dwight McBee underscored that open communication must be proactive: “We as leaders need to monitor and take proactive steps, rather than wait for team members to speak up.” Many employees continue to suffer in silence and only find the courage to voice their concerns when open communication is modeled by their leaders and organizations.
As a final question to all our panelists, we asked, “What is your top priority now as we go forward and how is it really going to move the needle to making impactful change?”
Dr. Adrienne Boissy – The goal is to grow and thrive and be something different, because empathy and vulnerability must become globally accepted as a part of effective leadership.
Megan Chavez – Our laser focus is being very meaningful and intentional about measuring our fractured ecosystem as one whole experience, in order to drive our strategic priorities.
Amy Mansue – Recovery is the goal. Team members want to know that they are working for a healthy organization. And reliability is key. We need to take stuff off the plates of our staff and close the distance between the caregiver and the patient.
Sven Gierlinger – Continue to support team members to make sure that they are thriving. Restore and amplify human connections.
Dwight McBee – Growth. I want to be fully committed to learning and growing and be responsive to the needs of patients no matter what they look like or believe.
Join us for our next fireside chat, “Be A Leader Nobody Wants To Leave,” on Tuesday, June 29th at 1PM EST. Data shows that bad leadership has significant impact on turnover and low engagement. Uncover the importance of getting to the other side of bad leadership with Wambi CEO, Rebecca Metter, as she collaborates with healthcare leadership thought leader, Kris Baird, Founder of the Baird Group, to discuss key components that will help managers elevate their leadership skills. This fireside chat will outline the most important actions we can take to drive retention and build workplaces where employees thrive.
Meet Estrella Parker of Satellite Healthcare / WellBound
“As human beings, we are not doing things. We are actually doing things because they’re meaningful to us. That is what inspiration is really about, and in the modern workplace we’re so driven by technology and we’re getting pinged all the time and everyone has learned how to be productive. It’s really important to inspire people so that their whole being shows up in the situations they’re in at work.”
Listen to hear how Satellite Healthcare / WellBound uses listening and inspiration to create a meaningful employee and patient experience.
Estrella Parker emphasizes the Wambi value of compassion in her recommendation to actively listen to colleagues and carve out the deliberate space to do so.
“Start with listening and when you’re listening, you give space to that person you’re listening to. Sometimes we listen through surveys, right? And so one of the things that we do is really pay attention to what people are saying, what our patients are saying, and when you couple that with what the organization is about the mission that we have, the values that we have, it becomes then a task of making sure that we connect that. We connect the meaning of what they’re doing, the meaning of their role, the meaning of the situation, to what matters to them and to what matters to the organization.”
The Resilience Workbook – Strengthen your organizational resilience and align team goals with The Resilience Workbook, a free 12-page resource to mitigate clinician burnout. Download it here: https://wambi.org/building-culture-of-resilience-workbook/
This Gut + Science episode is sponsored by Wambi. Don’t miss out on future episodes; subscribe today!
Dr. Bonnie Clipper, DNP, MA, MBA, RN, Chief Clinical Officer at Wambi was joined by Bonnie Barnes, CEO and Co-founder of The DAISY Foundation, a two-decades-old initiative that has been celebrating nurses in over 4800 healthcare facilities and schools of nursing around the world, to lead this inspiring conversation on the powerful habit of storytelling. When asked, “what excites you the most about the work you’re doing right now?,” Bonnie Barnes shared:
“Over the last several years, and especially since the start of the pandemic, our entire health system is turning its attention to the focus on well-being of staff. And the well-being of nurses, as we all know, is critically important before someone can take care of somebody else they’ve got to be taken care of themselves.”
For more from Bonnie Barnes, listen to her Gut + Science podcast episode on “Providing Meaningful Connection.“
Why does storytelling matter? The meaningful stories of what nurses do for the betterment of society and the gratitude stemming from that recognition contributes to a nurse’s well-being and resilience. As thousands of nurses grapple with the hardships of the pandemic, employee retention is presenting a challenge to the field. Getting personalized recognition is powerful tool in supporting staff morally, emotionally, and physically.
During this conversation, Bonnie and Bonnie were joined by two DAISY award winners, Albert Sagaoinit from Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia, California, and Bryan Gough from Jersey Shore University Medical Center (part of the Hackensack Meridian Health network) in Neptune, New Jersey. Both recipients shared similarities in their professional journeys: their nursing pursuits were second career opportunities after they felt something “missing” in previous roles and their wives are also nurses. Here’s what each honoree had to say about the positive influence of being recognized through DAISY and Wambi.
Bryan Gough on the Patient Care Experience We had to be those advocates for the patients so to be recognized on a national level for as something as big as DAISY made it really feel like I was doing the right thing and and honestly, I am just going to keep doing what I’m doing. Being recognized like this really solidifies in my mind that I’m in the right field. I truly love what I do and look forward to going to work every day. Thanks for letting us share our stories.
Albert Sagaoinit on the Patient Care Experience Sometimes, when nurses are so busy, we tend to forget the emotional aspect of care, which is a vital part of a patient’s recovery. Whether you’re dealing with a patient or a family member, simple things like asking how their day was and helping them make phone calls to a loved one, or even sharing a good laugh can really impact the overall overall experience and the quality of care. When you send the patient home, or say goodbye for the day, and they mention how grateful they are to have you, only then do you realize you made someone’s life meaningful and that you did a good job.
Wambi is gifting a donation to The DAISY Foundation in exchange for your insights and feedback on our brand new release. Book a conversation with us today!
PHILADELPHIA, PA — May 6, 2021. Wambi, a holistic real-time recognition and culture transformation solution in healthcare, announces the winners of their first annual “Nurse of the Year” award.
To shine a light on the outstanding nurses serving our clients nationwide, Wambi launched the 2021 Wambi Nurse of the Year Award in anticipation of National Nurses Week, which runs May 6th to May 12th. Users of the Wambi platform were encouraged to nominate a peer who they believe embodies one of Wambi’s core values: Gratitude, Compassion, Joy, Imagination, and Fearlessness. The purpose of the annual initiative is to promote nurse recognition, inspire feelings of teamwork and camaraderie, and boost feelings of appreciation and optimism among nurses during the weeks leading up to National Nurses Week.
Users from all participating clients submitted nurse nominations, and Wambi received overwhelmingly positive feedback from executive leadership. Lisa Jennings, Director of Patient Experience at University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health Medical Center said, “The camaraderie of our team has grown exponentially over this pandemic and Wambi Nurse of the Year nominations have been a wonderful way for nurses to celebrate each other. The sentiments are so beautiful and healing.”
Eileen is a clinical nurse working in the ICU at University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health Medical Center in Bel Air, Maryland. Eileen was nominated by her peer, Tammie Alley, who said, “Eileen is a very compassionate nurse who is always looking out for her patients, and other nurse’s patients. I witnessed her compassion with a patient that was not hers but was in the process of dying and on COVID isolation. The patient’s family was unfortunately not able to be present during the time of her death. Eileen took time out of her busy schedule to sit with the patient and hold her hand. What great compassion.” Eileen responded to the news of winning by saying, “This is fantastic news and I am so honored. I couldn’t do it without the awesome team that I work with. The last year has been a trying time and our patients need us now more than ever. Being a nurse requires that we fulfill many roles for the well-being of our patients. We provide the hand to hold, the shoulder to cry on, the ears to listen, and the smile behind the mask! Nursing will never just be a job, it’s a calling.”
Eileen was chosen based on the strength of her nomination and its alignment with Wambi values. Because the Wambi platform reinforces that sharing gratitude is equally as important as receiving recognition, both Eileen Keuster and Tammy Alley will receive a free pair of BALA Twelves Premium Nursing Shoes.
Five honorable mentions were also selected, each aligning with one of Wambi’s key values.
Declaring the Wambi Nurse of the Year Award a success in uniting nurses and promoting gratitude during these demanding times, Wambi CEO and Co-founder Rebecca Metter adds:
“There has never been a more important time to thank the nurses who are at the bedside, day after day, providing compassionate care. While the outpouring of gratitude from patients and Americans as a whole is priceless, so too is the message of appreciation a nurse receives from her peers and colleagues, recognizing their hard work and dedication to serving others. Wambi is proud to be part of the sharing of these moments.”
Wambi’s holistic real-time recognition and culture transformation solution improves the healthcare experience for patients and staff through the power of gratitude. Its gamified technology delivers real-time feedback from patients and other team members that recognizes, rewards, and motivates optimal care. With the proven ability to increase workforce engagement, reduce clinician burnout, and drive higher patient satisfaction, Wambi improves human connection for all.
For additional information, please visit www.wambi.org.