October 16, 2025 • 20 mins
In this episode, Press Ganey CEO Pat Ryan talks with Dr. Kevin B. Churchwell, President and CEO of Boston Children’s Hospital, about building a culture of safety and trust and how transparency, a shared safety language, and daily huddles turn good intentions into measurable outcomes.
This episode is sponsored by Press Ganey.
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(00:00):
Welcome, everyone, to a special edition of the
Becker's Healthcare podcast series. Today, we will be
diving into a conversation with Pat Ryan, CEO
at Press Ganey, and doctor Kevin Churchwell, the
CEO at Boston Children's Hospital,
as featured on Press Ganey's PG Pulse podcast.
We hope you enjoy this special episode.
Welcome to PG Pulse, Press Ganey's podcast on
(00:23):
all things health care, tech, and human experience.
In this podcast, we'll be joined by some
of the best and brightest minds in the
industry to discuss challenges, share insights, and innovate
the future of health care. Thanks for tuning
in. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Welcome. We're here at the PG Pulse. I
am the privilege of being here with doctor
Kevin Churchwell from Boston Children's Hospital. Welcome, Kevin.
(00:46):
Pleasure to be here. Thank you, Pan. Great
to have you. We've, we've known each other
for a very long time. Like, it goes
back beyond,
when I led Press Ganey.
I've always been a fan of, Boston Children's
and every once in a while, a contributor.
So, it's, it's great to have you here,
and you do amazing work. Well, I appreciate
that, and thanks for the support. Always looking
(01:07):
for that. Exactly. Well, my, my youngest son
who's 32 has,
had surgery there a long time ago, and
it's it's you'll be glad you know it's
all working out. So, you're we're in good
shape. I always like to check-in. Exactly.
Well, you know, this is a, a fairly
dynamic,
time in the industry, but I like to
start out with just a little bit of,
(01:28):
your background. And we were just talking that,
we both spent some time in Nashville. You
more than me. Yes. Give us give us,
the quick highlights. How how did you end
up in medicine? And, you've, you've got an
identical
twin brother who, by the way, is, he's
walked through meetings before. I've thought, Kevin is
so rude to me. He doesn't he doesn't
answer when I call out to him and
(01:49):
recognize
mistake, but give us just a quick background.
Sure. Sure.
I actually grew up in Nashville Nashville, Tennessee,
and,
my family is
five kids,
three boys four boys and a girl.
And,
first time I really left Nashville was to
(02:09):
go to college.
I went to MIT and found out over
a period of time that,
I wasn't really,
interested as much as I thought in the
engineering aspect
as opposed
to what interested me in terms of interaction
with people,
teaching
and also figuring out things.
And so medicine became a logical
(02:32):
idea for me to pursue.
And so I decided to be a pediatrician
and then made the decision to do my
training at a
in an environment where I would see everything
twice.
And there weren't a lot
of residency
programs like that. There still aren't, but Boston
Children's really fit that bill. Is there something,
(02:53):
as you think about your recruiting, is there
something about the the mission of a children's
hospital that,
health systems in general should shouldn't learn from?
The importance of kindness,
importance of,
individuals that believe that that's important.
I think that
as you look into pediatric
hospitals, children's hospitals, I'm not saying that adult
(03:15):
hospitals aren't doing a great job. Everybody's working
as hard as they can, right, to improve
the staff experience, the patient experience.
But
we work with a really precious commodity,
and those are our kids and that's the
future.
And how we relate to them,
is extremely important. How we relate to the
family, it's extremely important. So kindness is very
(03:37):
important. I think you see that across the
board.
When you interact at Boston Children's or with
my colleagues
across the country, that we believe that that's
incredibly important
to relate, to be kind,
because kindness then denotes that we are thinking
about them. Who's
who are we here for? Am I here
(03:57):
for myself or am I here for the
patient and the family?
And so that I think that helps them
us.
Yeah. That's that's
fantastic.
You know, as you as you think about
your
going
down that path, one of the things that
you have pursued throughout your career is high
reliability
and safety. Yes.
(04:19):
And,
we we talk about it a lot.
I I recently had a safety event. My
wife had appendicitis,
and they ruptured, and there's a whole series
of issues around it, which I won't bore
the listeners with. But I got an opportunity
to sleep in a hospital for ten days,
and,
you know, the
(04:40):
the the obvious nature
of this three system,
hospital, the day hospital, the night hospital, and
the weekend hospital.
And I and I called on some of
our clients. I I I put out a
note on it to to to consider
looking at the huddles and the way that
things
occur, on weekends. And I get a lot
of tremendous responses from people, and it it
(05:02):
feels like the industry still has a big
step forward with regard to safety. Lots of
progress,
but really looking high reliability and safety. How
do you feel about that, and what drove
your passion for it,
and, what's your advice to the industry?
Well, part of the passion, of course, was
the work that I did as a critical
(05:23):
care physician
where you
see the issues,
you see the cracks
in the wall,
you see where things are dropped,
and you can see
where
the outcome could have changed if we communicated
better, if we had better systems in place.
(05:43):
At Boston Children's,
we had worked very hard on safety, called
in safety.
It had gotten it to a point where
we were
very proud of what we were doing.
But it was very obvious that we had
a lot of work to do.
Power gradients,
lack of communication,
(06:03):
accepting,
an environment that,
we really shouldn't accept.
And so we brought high reliability in for
those reasons.
Now I will tell you, it wasn't just
duck soup
just to get everybody on board.
That was very clear,
that,
working with
our staff physicians,
(06:24):
the nurses got it very quickly. Right.
That,
they believed that we were doing as good
as we possibly could. Why change?
We were top notch. And
what changed,
the conversation,
was one slide.
We put together one slide
that showed how many kids we had harmed
(06:46):
over a two year period.
And let's say all the kids died from
the heart, but there was harm
to these children.
And from the
faculty standpoint, this slide probably had two or
three patients in it.
We failed the entire slide.
And that was a wake up call. That
was the wake up call. Oh,
(07:08):
maybe we aren't as good as we think
we are. Maybe we should cling on to
this.
And that then drove a different conversation.
It drove a conversation with our faculty, with
our nurses, with our teams
around a board team approach
where the huddle became,
this organic
(07:28):
entity that is now across the entire hospital,
entire enterprise,
where communication
is not a,
bad word, but a word that
is utilized all the time. You know, what
I love is the vocabulary of high reliability.
I love it because I know that we've
made progress when everyone's using it.
(07:50):
So our physician in chief,
who was the who at the time was
our,
chair of pediatrics,
got involved with it. Wasn't really enthusiastic about
it, but got really involved with it.
But now we can be in any kind
of meeting. And he will say, Kevin, can
I ask a clarifying question?
(08:11):
So I know that we've made progress.
That was because using because high reliability is
so much spent as a vocabulary,
a utilization of words,
to sort of fully set the standard of
how we communicate
and what we communicate about.
And in order to do that, you've got
to get everybody to gleam onto that, and
we've been able to do that. How do
how do you do it with the turnover
(08:33):
in health systems today, averaging 20% for many
people. You think of every two years, you've
got 40% of your
workforce as new. Do you have the regular
ongoing trading? Is is it just embedded in
your system? How do you make sure that
the culture continues to Right. Focus on it?
So everyone who comes in in their orientation
(08:55):
learns about it as part of it.
There is a refreshes
that we have put in place. We're in
a big refresh right now. We call it
High Reliability
two point zero.
That's what's happening now.
And then it's right in front of everybody.
Every morning I get the email how many
days we've gone without a serious safety event.
(09:16):
Everybody sees it.
So you started with,
we've gone two days.
Then it goes to five days.
Then it goes to twenty days.
And then we celebrated when we got over
one hundred days without a serious safety event.
And now we've had multiple times, but we've
gone more than a hundred days. It's fifty
two days,
(09:36):
as of today.
Then we I wanna point that out to
whoever's watching this, the the
the
your MIT work. Your measurement
matters. Measurement matters. Yeah. So you put we
put it out in front of everybody. That
that's that's an important point because I'm not
sure all systems
are that transparent
(09:56):
with regard to it. And so how's transparency
come come to play? Is it that when
people see it, no no one wants to
see a safety event and the transparency
brings shines a a brighter light on it?
So transparency is very important from that standpoint.
You have to get used to it. You
know,
in the beginning, everyone said, why are you
doing this?
(10:17):
Shouldn't we sort of should this be sort
of hidden and etcetera? But the more you
do it, the more everyone realizes the important
subject.
And it creates a it creates a goal
for everyone. How long can we go? What
does that mean to go that long? Well,
it means we haven't hung the child.
That's fabulous work. Yeah. How do you how
(10:38):
do you,
is sure your workforce
has the resiliency
to deal with
the stress of the job? And, you know,
you talked about the event where you you
were working, you lost a child. I mean,
that that that in itself
is an incredible
moment and experience
(10:58):
emotionally. How do you how do you ensure
that your entire workforce
in in both the pandemic, obviously, something we
didn't expect, and now where where I I
would say there's a high level of stress,
just in the overall environment,
how do you ensure that you you continue
to work with them to build a resiliency
within the workforce? So that's one of our
(11:20):
biggest challenges now.
And that
pre COVID, post COVID,
the challenges
our workforce has, they've encountered,
and, this word resiliency,
has taken on multiple
meanings
on connotations,
and then
(11:41):
and the lack thereof,
has really brought has come to the forefront.
And what have we put in place? Well,
we've put in place,
both for our faculty and for our staff
offices,
where they can come and get support,
when there are issues,
(12:02):
that really
drive their lack of resiliency or to increase
the stress that they're under.
We've put together
different groups,
that meet on a regular basis,
support groups from that standpoint.
We
did something that I didn't think was gonna
work, but I think has worked beautifully is
(12:23):
that we recruited an omniscientist.
And she,
has been just fabulous to the point that
now we have one and a half
because of all the issues
that they encounter.
Our staff have a place to go to
that is confidential.
That is these individuals
(12:44):
are in are just incredible in terms of
their experience,
how they interact
with individuals and groups that are having these
types of issues with resiliency.
And there are other things that we've done,
but it's still a challenge.
It be it it,
it's not the way,
(13:04):
I can't say this, but I'll say it
anyway. It's not the way,
I did it when I I did it
when I when I was taking care of
patients.
There's no more really there's no more tough
it out kind of stuff.
Now certainly in that environment,
I had my own PTSD
Right. Right, that shows up later on.
And not recognizing that, at the time was
(13:27):
just part of the,
the way it was,
but it's not acceptable anymore.
No. My my, children have informed me that
the I walked uphill both ways through snow
to school
story is
lost on them. It's an interesting story, but
they only need to hear it once. And,
you know, we have a workforce that's,
(13:48):
my my guess is your workforce is, somewhere
around thirty, forty percent millennials and Gen Zers,
60%.
Oh, yeah. 60. It's so yours is higher
than the the average is. And this is
a group of people who are passionate
about, having impact,
sometimes
wanting to know up what their impact is
every six months, but,
(14:09):
it's a it's a different group to communicate
with, and I would argue probably better. I
I grew up in the same, don't speak
unless spoken to corporate environment, and don't leave
the office until your boss goes out the
door, and make sure he's got a good
ten minute head start Right. To the process.
And, I you know, I'm I'm now invited
(14:30):
to go to lunchtime barre classes with my
marketing department if I I'd I'd, like. So,
it is a different workforce,
to manage, but I I think they'd probably
have the the right idea with with regard
to it. So those programs are, an important
Experience in being an omnibusman, you can actually
train for that,
(14:52):
and get certified
in that regard.
And,
actually, she just came from the international conference.
So it's
a discipline that is continues to evolve from
that standpoint.
But it's
a
it's a combination
of psychology, it's a combination
(15:12):
of having legal expertise.
And
so different individuals get into it based upon
their profession.
And our the current person that we have
is an individual who
just can,
I talk about the listening
aspect,
(15:33):
and she has that listening gene,
but she can translate
it to find the right
conversation
the individual or the groups need to actually
move forward, which I find incredible?
That's fantastic. You know, Tom Lee talks about
social capital. I I'm I'm sure if you
didn't get a signed book from him, you'll
have one by the end of this,
(15:55):
this meeting. But, it's it's interesting. I I
wrote down the words, that you you've used
with team, respect, kindness, communication.
And, what you what we've discovered with our
our data is that if if you think
about, an organization, if you don't have safety,
you don't have engagement of your workforce.
(16:16):
And we see workforce is reporting,
that, you know, 60%
of their their nursing staff doesn't feel that
they're completely
safe at work, both physically
and for their for their patients.
And if you don't have safety, then you
don't have engagement. And if you don't have
engagement, you don't have experience,
in the process. And this concept of building
(16:38):
social capital
with teams
and bringing them together with the kindness, the
respect, and the communication.
Do you have
a plan? Is it part of your strategy
where you implement a plan to to create
that kind of social capital or call it
what you'd like with regard to teams and
building those separate teams. We put together our,
(17:00):
yearly safety plan,
and don't put it on the shelf.
Okay? That's an active
engaged entity or document
that we sort of measure ourselves against
throughout the year. And then we also present
it to our
(17:21):
subcommittee,
the board
that is engaged in patient
safety,
so that there is a transparency and awareness
at that level
of the work that's happening.
High reliability,
is a is a cornerstone
for the work we do with in that
regard. Then safety for our staff.
(17:41):
As you've described,
post COVID,
the number of assaults,
the number of just poor interactions,
between staff and staff, staff and families,
staff and patients, patients and patients has just
gone up dramatically.
And how do we do a better job
(18:02):
of providing
that safety for our staff?
Well, we do it by learning. We started
one way by, you know, sort of a
Roman Legion approach, just put more people on
it,
war security,
and etcetera.
And that worked to some degree,
but
it wasn't really getting to the issue.
We certainly have changed the toll environment
(18:25):
of how patients' families
get to us.
Thank you so much.
Not multiple ways to get into the hospital.
There are only two to three ways. Right?
No one can get to the floor without
a badge. No one can get into the
elevator and get to a floor without a
badge.
And that's really helped our staff
(18:46):
feel safe from that standpoint.
And then,
there is, how do you interact with families
who are frustrated,
who have lost the ability to really interact
in a way that you expect them to
do. They,
they they reach out through,
their voice or physically.
(19:06):
And how do you stop that? How do
you really minimize that?
You create, we create a code of conduct,
that we sort of spread out across the
hospital.
Signs saying, this is what we expect
of Parcel Henley's,
and care as a first start,
and
give the staff the opportunity and the ability
(19:29):
to talk to families
to say, this is what we expect of
you,
in the care of your child.
The interactions between patients,
is also very difficult,
and we're still working on that. I can
tell you that.
How to do that well, what's the evolution
of that
is, really within the next frontier as we
(19:50):
move forward. Thank you for that. And as
we, close out, Kevin Churchwell,
service,
first,
listening, communication,
respect, kindness,
those are the words I wrote down. He
leads with that,
on his shirt sleeve. Thank you so much
for everything you do, and
I hope
(20:11):
that, our current administration will, listen to your
advice and, put the kids first. So thank
you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Pat.
Pleasure. That's a wrap.
Thank you for joining us today, and special
thanks to our guests for sharing their time
and insights.
Stay tuned for our next episode, which will
be released soon. In the meantime,
visit our website where you'll find more information
(20:33):
on the human experience
and a lot more.
Thank you, Pat and doctor Churchwell, for your
time and insights today. We also wanna thank
our podcast sponsor, Press Ganey. You can tune
in to more podcasts from Becker's Health Care
(20:53):
by visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.
Welcome, everyone, to a special edition of the
Becker's Healthcare podcast series. Today, we will be
diving into a conversation with Pat Ryan, CEO
at Press Ganey, and doctor Kevin Churchwell, the
CEO at Boston Children's Hospital,
as featured on Press Ganey's PG Pulse podcast.
We hope you enjoy this special episode.
Welcome to PG Pulse, Press Ganey's podcast on
(00:23):
all things health care, tech, and human experience.
In this podcast, we'll be joined by some
of the best and brightest minds in the
industry to discuss challenges, share insights, and innovate
the future of health care. Thanks for tuning
in. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Welcome. We're here at the PG Pulse. I
am the privilege of being here with doctor
Kevin Churchwell from Boston Children's Hospital. Welcome, Kevin.
(00:46):
Pleasure to be here. Thank you, Pan. Great
to have you. We've, we've known each other
for a very long time. Like, it goes
back beyond,
when I led Press Ganey.
I've always been a fan of, Boston Children's
and every once in a while, a contributor.
So, it's, it's great to have you here,
and you do amazing work. Well, I appreciate
that, and thanks for the support. Always looking
(01:07):
for that. Exactly. Well, my, my youngest son
who's 32 has,
had surgery there a long time ago, and
it's it's you'll be glad you know it's
all working out. So, you're we're in good
shape. I always like to check-in. Exactly.
Well, you know, this is a, a fairly
dynamic,
time in the industry, but I like to
start out with just a little bit of,
(01:28):
your background. And we were just talking that,
we both spent some time in Nashville. You
more than me. Yes. Give us give us,
the quick highlights. How how did you end
up in medicine? And, you've, you've got an
identical
twin brother who, by the way, is, he's
walked through meetings before. I've thought, Kevin is
so rude to me. He doesn't he doesn't
answer when I call out to him and
(01:49):
recognize
mistake, but give us just a quick background.
Sure. Sure.
I actually grew up in Nashville Nashville, Tennessee,
and,
my family is
five kids,
three boys four boys and a girl.
And,
first time I really left Nashville was to
(02:09):
go to college.
I went to MIT and found out over
a period of time that,
I wasn't really,
interested as much as I thought in the
engineering aspect
as opposed
to what interested me in terms of interaction
with people,
teaching
and also figuring out things.
And so medicine became a logical
(02:32):
idea for me to pursue.
And so I decided to be a pediatrician
and then made the decision to do my
training at a
in an environment where I would see everything
twice.
And there weren't a lot
of residency
programs like that. There still aren't, but Boston
Children's really fit that bill. Is there something,
(02:53):
as you think about your recruiting, is there
something about the the mission of a children's
hospital that,
health systems in general should shouldn't learn from?
The importance of kindness,
importance of,
individuals that believe that that's important.
I think that
as you look into pediatric
hospitals, children's hospitals, I'm not saying that adult
(03:15):
hospitals aren't doing a great job. Everybody's working
as hard as they can, right, to improve
the staff experience, the patient experience.
But
we work with a really precious commodity,
and those are our kids and that's the
future.
And how we relate to them,
is extremely important. How we relate to the
family, it's extremely important. So kindness is very
(03:37):
important. I think you see that across the
board.
When you interact at Boston Children's or with
my colleagues
across the country, that we believe that that's
incredibly important
to relate, to be kind,
because kindness then denotes that we are thinking
about them. Who's
who are we here for? Am I here
(03:57):
for myself or am I here for the
patient and the family?
And so that I think that helps them
us.
Yeah. That's that's
fantastic.
You know, as you as you think about
your
going
down that path, one of the things that
you have pursued throughout your career is high
reliability
and safety. Yes.
(04:19):
And,
we we talk about it a lot.
I I recently had a safety event. My
wife had appendicitis,
and they ruptured, and there's a whole series
of issues around it, which I won't bore
the listeners with. But I got an opportunity
to sleep in a hospital for ten days,
and,
you know, the
(04:40):
the the obvious nature
of this three system,
hospital, the day hospital, the night hospital, and
the weekend hospital.
And I and I called on some of
our clients. I I I put out a
note on it to to to consider
looking at the huddles and the way that
things
occur, on weekends. And I get a lot
of tremendous responses from people, and it it
(05:02):
feels like the industry still has a big
step forward with regard to safety. Lots of
progress,
but really looking high reliability and safety. How
do you feel about that, and what drove
your passion for it,
and, what's your advice to the industry?
Well, part of the passion, of course, was
the work that I did as a critical
(05:23):
care physician
where you
see the issues,
you see the cracks
in the wall,
you see where things are dropped,
and you can see
where
the outcome could have changed if we communicated
better, if we had better systems in place.
(05:43):
At Boston Children's,
we had worked very hard on safety, called
in safety.
It had gotten it to a point where
we were
very proud of what we were doing.
But it was very obvious that we had
a lot of work to do.
Power gradients,
lack of communication,
(06:03):
accepting,
an environment that,
we really shouldn't accept.
And so we brought high reliability in for
those reasons.
Now I will tell you, it wasn't just
duck soup
just to get everybody on board.
That was very clear,
that,
working with
our staff physicians,
(06:24):
the nurses got it very quickly. Right.
That,
they believed that we were doing as good
as we possibly could. Why change?
We were top notch. And
what changed,
the conversation,
was one slide.
We put together one slide
that showed how many kids we had harmed
(06:46):
over a two year period.
And let's say all the kids died from
the heart, but there was harm
to these children.
And from the
faculty standpoint, this slide probably had two or
three patients in it.
We failed the entire slide.
And that was a wake up call. That
was the wake up call. Oh,
(07:08):
maybe we aren't as good as we think
we are. Maybe we should cling on to
this.
And that then drove a different conversation.
It drove a conversation with our faculty, with
our nurses, with our teams
around a board team approach
where the huddle became,
this organic
(07:28):
entity that is now across the entire hospital,
entire enterprise,
where communication
is not a,
bad word, but a word that
is utilized all the time. You know, what
I love is the vocabulary of high reliability.
I love it because I know that we've
made progress when everyone's using it.
(07:50):
So our physician in chief,
who was the who at the time was
our,
chair of pediatrics,
got involved with it. Wasn't really enthusiastic about
it, but got really involved with it.
But now we can be in any kind
of meeting. And he will say, Kevin, can
I ask a clarifying question?
(08:11):
So I know that we've made progress.
That was because using because high reliability is
so much spent as a vocabulary,
a utilization of words,
to sort of fully set the standard of
how we communicate
and what we communicate about.
And in order to do that, you've got
to get everybody to gleam onto that, and
we've been able to do that. How do
how do you do it with the turnover
(08:33):
in health systems today, averaging 20% for many
people. You think of every two years, you've
got 40% of your
workforce as new. Do you have the regular
ongoing trading? Is is it just embedded in
your system? How do you make sure that
the culture continues to Right. Focus on it?
So everyone who comes in in their orientation
(08:55):
learns about it as part of it.
There is a refreshes
that we have put in place. We're in
a big refresh right now. We call it
High Reliability
two point zero.
That's what's happening now.
And then it's right in front of everybody.
Every morning I get the email how many
days we've gone without a serious safety event.
(09:16):
Everybody sees it.
So you started with,
we've gone two days.
Then it goes to five days.
Then it goes to twenty days.
And then we celebrated when we got over
one hundred days without a serious safety event.
And now we've had multiple times, but we've
gone more than a hundred days. It's fifty
two days,
(09:36):
as of today.
Then we I wanna point that out to
whoever's watching this, the the
the
your MIT work. Your measurement
matters. Measurement matters. Yeah. So you put we
put it out in front of everybody. That
that's that's an important point because I'm not
sure all systems
are that transparent
(09:56):
with regard to it. And so how's transparency
come come to play? Is it that when
people see it, no no one wants to
see a safety event and the transparency
brings shines a a brighter light on it?
So transparency is very important from that standpoint.
You have to get used to it. You
know,
in the beginning, everyone said, why are you
doing this?
(10:17):
Shouldn't we sort of should this be sort
of hidden and etcetera? But the more you
do it, the more everyone realizes the important
subject.
And it creates a it creates a goal
for everyone. How long can we go? What
does that mean to go that long? Well,
it means we haven't hung the child.
That's fabulous work. Yeah. How do you how
(10:38):
do you,
is sure your workforce
has the resiliency
to deal with
the stress of the job? And, you know,
you talked about the event where you you
were working, you lost a child. I mean,
that that that in itself
is an incredible
moment and experience
(10:58):
emotionally. How do you how do you ensure
that your entire workforce
in in both the pandemic, obviously, something we
didn't expect, and now where where I I
would say there's a high level of stress,
just in the overall environment,
how do you ensure that you you continue
to work with them to build a resiliency
within the workforce? So that's one of our
(11:20):
biggest challenges now.
And that
pre COVID, post COVID,
the challenges
our workforce has, they've encountered,
and, this word resiliency,
has taken on multiple
meanings
on connotations,
and then
(11:41):
and the lack thereof,
has really brought has come to the forefront.
And what have we put in place? Well,
we've put in place,
both for our faculty and for our staff
offices,
where they can come and get support,
when there are issues,
(12:02):
that really
drive their lack of resiliency or to increase
the stress that they're under.
We've put together
different groups,
that meet on a regular basis,
support groups from that standpoint.
We
did something that I didn't think was gonna
work, but I think has worked beautifully is
(12:23):
that we recruited an omniscientist.
And she,
has been just fabulous to the point that
now we have one and a half
because of all the issues
that they encounter.
Our staff have a place to go to
that is confidential.
That is these individuals
(12:44):
are in are just incredible in terms of
their experience,
how they interact
with individuals and groups that are having these
types of issues with resiliency.
And there are other things that we've done,
but it's still a challenge.
It be it it,
it's not the way,
(13:04):
I can't say this, but I'll say it
anyway. It's not the way,
I did it when I I did it
when I when I was taking care of
patients.
There's no more really there's no more tough
it out kind of stuff.
Now certainly in that environment,
I had my own PTSD
Right. Right, that shows up later on.
And not recognizing that, at the time was
(13:27):
just part of the,
the way it was,
but it's not acceptable anymore.
No. My my, children have informed me that
the I walked uphill both ways through snow
to school
story is
lost on them. It's an interesting story, but
they only need to hear it once. And,
you know, we have a workforce that's,
(13:48):
my my guess is your workforce is, somewhere
around thirty, forty percent millennials and Gen Zers,
60%.
Oh, yeah. 60. It's so yours is higher
than the the average is. And this is
a group of people who are passionate
about, having impact,
sometimes
wanting to know up what their impact is
every six months, but,
(14:09):
it's a it's a different group to communicate
with, and I would argue probably better. I
I grew up in the same, don't speak
unless spoken to corporate environment, and don't leave
the office until your boss goes out the
door, and make sure he's got a good
ten minute head start Right. To the process.
And, I you know, I'm I'm now invited
(14:30):
to go to lunchtime barre classes with my
marketing department if I I'd I'd, like. So,
it is a different workforce,
to manage, but I I think they'd probably
have the the right idea with with regard
to it. So those programs are, an important
Experience in being an omnibusman, you can actually
train for that,
(14:52):
and get certified
in that regard.
And,
actually, she just came from the international conference.
So it's
a discipline that is continues to evolve from
that standpoint.
But it's
a
it's a combination
of psychology, it's a combination
(15:12):
of having legal expertise.
And
so different individuals get into it based upon
their profession.
And our the current person that we have
is an individual who
just can,
I talk about the listening
aspect,
(15:33):
and she has that listening gene,
but she can translate
it to find the right
conversation
the individual or the groups need to actually
move forward, which I find incredible?
That's fantastic. You know, Tom Lee talks about
social capital. I I'm I'm sure if you
didn't get a signed book from him, you'll
have one by the end of this,
(15:55):
this meeting. But, it's it's interesting. I I
wrote down the words, that you you've used
with team, respect, kindness, communication.
And, what you what we've discovered with our
our data is that if if you think
about, an organization, if you don't have safety,
you don't have engagement of your workforce.
(16:16):
And we see workforce is reporting,
that, you know, 60%
of their their nursing staff doesn't feel that
they're completely
safe at work, both physically
and for their for their patients.
And if you don't have safety, then you
don't have engagement. And if you don't have
engagement, you don't have experience,
in the process. And this concept of building
(16:38):
social capital
with teams
and bringing them together with the kindness, the
respect, and the communication.
Do you have
a plan? Is it part of your strategy
where you implement a plan to to create
that kind of social capital or call it
what you'd like with regard to teams and
building those separate teams. We put together our,
(17:00):
yearly safety plan,
and don't put it on the shelf.
Okay? That's an active
engaged entity or document
that we sort of measure ourselves against
throughout the year. And then we also present
it to our
(17:21):
subcommittee,
the board
that is engaged in patient
safety,
so that there is a transparency and awareness
at that level
of the work that's happening.
High reliability,
is a is a cornerstone
for the work we do with in that
regard. Then safety for our staff.
(17:41):
As you've described,
post COVID,
the number of assaults,
the number of just poor interactions,
between staff and staff, staff and families,
staff and patients, patients and patients has just
gone up dramatically.
And how do we do a better job
(18:02):
of providing
that safety for our staff?
Well, we do it by learning. We started
one way by, you know, sort of a
Roman Legion approach, just put more people on
it,
war security,
and etcetera.
And that worked to some degree,
but
it wasn't really getting to the issue.
We certainly have changed the toll environment
(18:25):
of how patients' families
get to us.
Thank you so much.
Not multiple ways to get into the hospital.
There are only two to three ways. Right?
No one can get to the floor without
a badge. No one can get into the
elevator and get to a floor without a
badge.
And that's really helped our staff
(18:46):
feel safe from that standpoint.
And then,
there is, how do you interact with families
who are frustrated,
who have lost the ability to really interact
in a way that you expect them to
do. They,
they they reach out through,
their voice or physically.
(19:06):
And how do you stop that? How do
you really minimize that?
You create, we create a code of conduct,
that we sort of spread out across the
hospital.
Signs saying, this is what we expect
of Parcel Henley's,
and care as a first start,
and
give the staff the opportunity and the ability
(19:29):
to talk to families
to say, this is what we expect of
you,
in the care of your child.
The interactions between patients,
is also very difficult,
and we're still working on that. I can
tell you that.
How to do that well, what's the evolution
of that
is, really within the next frontier as we
(19:50):
move forward. Thank you for that. And as
we, close out, Kevin Churchwell,
service,
first,
listening, communication,
respect, kindness,
those are the words I wrote down. He
leads with that,
on his shirt sleeve. Thank you so much
for everything you do, and
I hope
(20:11):
that, our current administration will, listen to your
advice and, put the kids first. So thank
you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Pat.
Pleasure. That's a wrap.
Thank you for joining us today, and special
thanks to our guests for sharing their time
and insights.
Stay tuned for our next episode, which will
be released soon. In the meantime,
visit our website where you'll find more information
(20:33):
on the human experience
and a lot more.
Thank you, Pat and doctor Churchwell, for your
time and insights today. We also wanna thank
our podcast sponsor, Press Ganey. You can tune
in to more podcasts from Becker's Health Care
(20:53):
by visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.
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