Educated at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and trained at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Harvard fellowship in Palliative Care Education and Practice, Jennifer K. Clark, MD, has been in the world of healthcare for more than 20 years. With Med-Peds training and board certification in the subspecialty of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Dr. Clark is a physician and healthcare delivery consultant serving in various roles as a clinician educator, administrator and innovator at the local, national and international levels. When not serving in her volunteer role a ..read more

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Geiger talks about the need to support nurses holistically through an approach that Ingenovis calls ACT, which stands for Advocacy, Career, and Tools. Based on interdisciplinary research, Dr. Geiger and her team built the approach as a means of combatting burnout and building resilience at both the structural and individual levels. By advocating for what nurses and other clinicians need at the policy level, supporting their career advancement, and providing tools and resources that teach individual wellbeing, Dr. Geiger hopes to bolster the nursing field ..read more

In this episode, Dr. Raso and I talk about her latest research looking at authentic leadership, healthy work environment, team-member well-being, and nurse retention. In it, she uncovered a remarkable resilience of nurse leaders to continue leading with authenticity and humanity, even as the work environment for nurses has diminished. We talk about the need to support nurse leaders with the same process and practice improvement, as well as well-being support that frontline nurses need and deserve. Dr. Raso lays out a hope-filled vision for a future in which the structures of support for nurses ..read more

Drs. Farley and Shah recently spearheaded a collaboration with leaders from the AMA, AHA, CEO Coalition, Dr. Lorna Breen Foundation, IHI, and National Academy of Medicine (NAM) to create the 2022 Healthcare Workforce Rescue Package. The package was devised to help leaders zero in on the most impactful team member well-being efforts to undertake at the current stage of the pandemic. In this episode, we delve into each of the five practices outlined in the Rescue Package and look ahead to how these create a foundation for a transformed culture of well-being for all healthcare team members. Links ..read more

In this episode of the Caring Greatly™ podcast, Dr. DeRienzo and I discuss his new orientation to the “why” behind care transformation. Like most quality improvement leaders, Dr. DeRienzo’s focus has long been on the triple aim of improved care quality, reduced cost, and improved experience. But the work he’s focusing on now is creating energy and opportunity for a greater focus on health equity, necessary variability, and humanity. Care transformation, then, becomes less about productivity and standardization as a primary aim, and more about allowing clinicians to practice at the top of their ..read more

In this episode, Dr. Rizzo and I talk about the impetus behind creating the Encore Physicians Program, and the benefit it brings to retired physicians, community health centers, and the patients they serve. We look at the synergy and learning opportunities provided by linking both primary care and specialty physicians to the patients who seek care at community health centers, as well as the role of an intermediary such as Encore Physicians in creating connections between clinics and retired physicians. Finally, Dr. Rizzo shares his perspective on things to consider for leaders looking to set u ..read more

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Mr. Forti shares the science of autonomic downregulation as a focal point for individual wellbeing. While he is an advocate for system change, he believes that those in the healing profession also have a moral obligation to care for their personal wellbeing, given the critical nature of the work they do and the proven links between wellbeing and patient care outcomes. At Hospital for Special Surgery, Mr. Forti created a program that teaches the science behind autonomic downregulation as well as simple practices such as sleep, breathwork, alcohol-abstention, g ..read more

In this episode, Dr. Pettit and I talk about how advances in cancer treatment have increased survivorship, but also resulted in patients living long enough to experience the long-term side effects of both primary and adjuvant therapies. Often these impact survivors’ physical, emotional, and even financial and social well-being. Dr. Pettit and her team conduct and support research and innovation that bridge the interests and inputs of patients, life sciences firms, academic medicine, clinicians, and public health toward a future of survivorship that supports all aspects of patients’ health, wel ..read more

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Sexton talks about his team’s focus on providing accessible, evidence-based wellbeing practice to healthcare team members across the country. His five-part training covers gratitude, work-life balance, self-compassion, awe and wonder, and group-level wellbeing. The approach mixes didactic learning on the science behind wellbeing practices as well as time to put the concepts into practice. Dr. Sexton believes that evidence-based, individually-focused wellbeing practices are an essential complement to broader efforts to transform system factors that cause b ..read more

In this episode, Dr. Harry and I talk about the principles of cognitive load theory and how they apply to the practice of medicine. We discuss individual, team, and systems approaches to managing and minimizing cognitive load by removing extraneous load from system processes and technologies. We talk about the need to bring human factors engineering science and principles into healthcare so that leaders can work with the cognitive capacities of team members, and free up their finite resources for the most human-centered tasks and relationships. Finally, Dr. Harry shares insights into how leade ..read more