by Ted Eytan, on 18 Jun 2007 08:06 pm
The Journey
Like an anthropologist changing the culture ; Permission to be transparent
The first part of this post comes from a comment made to me by one of our nurses, who I was shadowing today. I asked to see how she cares for patients because of the specialized support her team provides for patients admitted to the hospital - making sure that every day is useful and that they depart safely.
She made the comment as I observed her because I asked a few questions about why things are done a certain way. A few times, she stopped, showed me a few examples of how things worked, and then brought me back to the task at hand. When I observe I am clear that I am not there to critique or suggest a better way; I am there to watch and listen. I think that in the course of asking why things are a certain way, she began to ask why as well. I guess it is possible that it is an intervention just to pay attention to what is happening in your system. That makes my time twice as productive - learning about an important part of care that is provided that I didn’t know about, and supporting others in learning about the care they provide, too.
The second part of my post involves the aspect of LEAN that covers the acknowledgment of opportunities to improve. Health care organizations are sometimes reticent to do this in a public way. Our journey has opened up our thinking a bit to the point that when we reflect internally, we now do it with the idea that we are reflecting for our members, too.
With that in mind, we just filmed a video podcast of my colleague, David McCulloch, MD, discussing his use of a visual system to track our progress in improving quality. Before we filmed, I asked that we would film it with the intention of sharing it with our members. After we filmed, I asked my leadership to share it publicly. They said yes. It’s in the next post. Our culture is changing. Enjoy.