How Healthcare Works, LLC

When leading a new team or teaching a new group of students, I would ask team members or students to tell me something unique about themselves. My reason for doing so was often two-fold. First, it really helped me learn about the employees' and students' names. Second, I was able to gain insight into who they were as people and what they felt was important. As time went on, I would ask the same team members and the same students to tell me something they had accomplished, tell me about their special skills, and tell me about what made them believe they could succeed. In my unofficial polling and assessment, I found that these employees and students had something in common. They found it hard to talk about what made them successful as individuals. They were more than eager and able to talk and "brag" about the accomplishments of their families, their friends, their neighbors, their classmates, and their coworkers.  However, they were not able to tell me what speci

Every year, there is that story about the sports team that just couldn't get along. The team was fighting at practices, fighting in the media, and arguing over petty issues or who did who wrong. The team then started to lose games, and the coach came forward and said he just couldn't figure out what went wrong. He said it just wasn't their best game. Players left the team and went elsewhere. Sadly, the viewers knew the truth as they watched the dramatic irony unfold. Infighting was the underlying cause of the problem. It was at the core of all of the surrounding issues.  Unfortunately, the above scenario plays out not only on the field or on the court, but also in classrooms, communities, families and healthcare organizations. Once a culture of infighting is fostered and allowed to develop, the organization is doomed for failure in one area or another. Infighting tears away at the very fibers of an organization until the nerves and goals of all of those involved are

When I first started working in quality, I found myself surprised by how many staff did not follow quality measures. "But they know what they are supposed to do," I would say. In response, I would be told that I needed to lower my expectations for people. Quality Floor At the very bottom of quality care is what I refer to as the quality floor. This is the very minimum staff need to do to achieve quality goals. They fill out the audit forms, complete the history and physical, check the box, and do what they think they are supposed to do. In this case, the quality bar is set so low that it is easy for any staff member to step over it. No outcomes are measured, no follow-through occurs, no patient followup occurs, no analysis of results occurs. Mediocrity There are other quality departments and organizations that set their quality goals at what "passing" is for a quality indicator.  The passing point maybe 50% patient satisfaction, 60% of audits completed, r

In many aspects, cyber-bullying and cyber-security are treated as separate and distinct issues in healthcare.  However, they are actually part of the same problem and are inclusive of one another rather than mutually exclusive of each other.  A culture that tolerates cyber-bullying creates an  atmosphere where cyber-security measures are taken lightly and not considered a serious threat. Cyber-bullying often occurs on a micro rather than a macro level.  That is, cyber-bullying is more often to occur at an individual level. An individual or small group of individuals targets another individual or small group of individuals. The target may also be a patient. Examples of micro level cyber-bullying include the following: Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com *Accessing a coworker's  sent email messages and then bullying the employee over those messages. *Rifling through another employee's computer files or desk work from computer files and then bullying the employee in the physica

When I was in college, this acquaintance of mine would come up to me and say, "You aren't acting like yourself today." I would turn to him and ask, "Who am I acting like then?" He would say, "I don't know, but not yourself." As leaders, we have a lot of people pushing and pulling us in the direction that they want us to go. There are demands at work, at home, from coworkers, stakeholders, board members and family. Moreover, they all have opinions on what you should and should not be doing and how you should or should not go about achieving your goals. In addition to that, they have opinions about how you should act or what you should or should not say. They may even threaten to tell something you did to embarrass you or make you feel you must behave or make decisions in a certain way. The truth is, no one knows you as well as you know you. It seems like a simple concept to grasp, but so often we forget about ourselves.  We forget to act like ou

In finding the core of "creating unhappiness," the concept is essentially a form of top-down workplace bullying.  The manager institutes a bullying style to get an employee to leave.  It is easy to identify because anyone who has ever been on the outside of some clique or social group has experienced it. A group of girls refuses to let you sit at their table at lunch. Friends invite everyone to the party but one person, or they refuse to show up to her party. Work colleagues go through someone's desk, rummage through their purse, and file complaints to management. When examined in this manner, "creating unhappiness" is nothing more than petty, passive-aggressive, bullying behavior. At the root of this problem is that the department director was creating chaos within her division. For months, she encouraged and allowed other managers and staff members to be distracted from their work and their duties in order to bully this person out of the department. Imagine

The past few elections it seems at least one candidate for each party has campaigned promising change . The two most recent U.S. presidents used the idea of change in their campaigns effectively, ultimately leading to their elections.  The candidates convinced the citizenry that change was necessary, and the citizens elected those candidates.  Now, the citizens want to see change. The citizens want to initiate change. However, they are unsure how to make sure change happens. Politicians, lobbyists, special interest groups, and even change-makers have a method for creating change and affecting policy in American society. Outlined below is a method that can be used for how one person, one group, one community, one citizenry, can affect change in policy in this country. 1. Center on One Issue . One thing lobbyists and special interest groups do really well is center, or focus, on one issue.  An environmental lobby is not going to spend its time discussing healthcare, just as a gun lobby