changes

Healing a Health System....

Healing a Health System....

Can the Health System survive?

It comes down to the people.  It is not about their work, but how they feel; feeling valued, feeling your work is valuable to those you serve, and feeling valuable doing the work.  It is work as an extension of what you believe, what you love, and how you want the world to be reflected back to you.

For 22 years I have watched systems work to chart their way into the future. It is a difficult future; the Baby Boom generation is such that it is going to be a costly future as well.  It is not a problem, problems can be solved. This is a predicament, it is inevitable, it must be managed.  To manage a predicament people must bring their best, give it, and do that repeatedly.

Slowing down to live...

Slowing down to live...

Looking out the window, I can see them working their way across the barren flowerbeds.  The bright orange of their breast showing me the hope of spring. Today is the first day I have seen robins in the yard.  Moving from place to place with their hopping step, pausing to peck and scratch at the surface.  They are so puffy with the feathers fluffed up against the cold wind, as if inflated just a little too much.  It is a sign of springtime, and today is the first day I have seen them.  It reminds me that I should take time to look, and see what is happening in my world, something I forget to do.

Speaking to the heart

Speaking to the heart

‘How did you know what to say to her?’ asked the resident, ‘We have been trying to figure her out all morning and have gotten nowhere.’ An expression of mixed curiosity and frustration crossed her face. ‘I try not to focus on how she is acting, as much as I try to talk to the part of her Jesus would love’, I found myself answering.  This catch phrase would find its way into conversation regularly during the years of teaching, it captured a concept I had struggled to teach prior to that moment of insight. The concept of connection, it is one of the most difficult things for doctors in training to understand.  Years of training make this more difficult, training that does not focus upon the human connection, instead focusing upon the biological working of humans.