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What I'm Reading: The Art of Gathering

Meetings often default to logistics, platitudes, or maintaining norms, the Resiliency Center’s Megan Whitlock explains. By thinking of meetings as gatherings we can turn them into a powerful tool to bring about something every workplace needs more of: belonging.

The High Reliability Thanksgiving

Every year, Cindy Spangler hosts ‘Friendsgiving’ for over forty friends, family, and work colleagues. Cindy is also a senior value engineer and associate editor for Accelerate. So we asked: what is the process behind a successful Thanksgiving?

Leadership Is Harder Than It Looks—Here Are Two Ways to Make It Easier

With thoughtful consideration of lessons learned from more than 20 years of nursing, nurse manager Shegi Thomas works to make life better for patients and staff. Along with opening our internal medicine unit 4 years ago, Shegi brings perspective from rehab, newborn intensive care, and from organizations like the WHO, to sum up a few leadership principles applicable to any team.

Is Less More? Oral Versus Intravenous Antibiotics After Hospitalization

Sometimes the most impactful change comes from simply asking, “Why are we doing things this way?” Pediatric infectious disease professor Adam Hersh explains the impact of practice inertia on antibiotic treatment in pediatric patients, and how questioning the status quo improved outcomes and reduced cost.

Happy Lean Halloween!

This post is inspired by a few cartoons Linda Tyler shared with us a few years back. Just for fun, we thought we’d check in with our resident expert Cindy Spangler–value engineer and modern-day renaissance woman–for some cartoon captions that scream happy lean Halloween!

Don’t Let Metrics Undermine Your Purpose

Utah’s Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton describes a strategic challenge faced by many industries, including health care. We are at risk for prioritizing achievement of metrics over our purpose. He challenges us to think beyond metrics to what patients actually need from us: patient-centered, outcome-focused, affordable care.

How to be a Virtual Clinician

Virtual care is the way of the future. How do clinicians trained in a face-to-face world transition their skills for a virtual care environment? Physician assistant Jonathan Chao shares three ways Urgent Care delivers expertise and compassion in a virtual world.

Exploring a New Way to Learn

Hospitalist and Graduate Medical Education director of quality and safety Ryan Murphy explains how Accelerate’s playlists are an infinitely modifiable, curiosity-satiating approach to unifying learners behind a single vision. With more than 15,000 visitors in the last 12 months, it’s worth taking a look.

Chemotherapy Standardization: A Case Study in What it Takes to Design Safe Systems

Preventing medication errors often means using checklists and leveraging technology. But implementing these seemingly simple tools requires interdisciplinary teamwork, learning, and a commitment to ongoing verification that the process is working. Clinical operations nursing director Joy Lombardi describes how Huntsman Cancer Institute made chemotherapy highly reliable.

Neuroplasticity: How to Use Your Brain’s Malleability to Improve Your Well-being

The brain is a highly active and malleable learning machine. Knowing that, we can develop strategies to improve well-being, like engaging in activities that are new and challenging. Resiliency Center Director Megan Call explains how to get started.

Unraveling Payment: The Whole (Health Care) Enchilada

Zac Watne returns to answer another variation of the all-too-familiar question: Why is health care so hard to understand? In this post, Zac unravels the bureaucratic and economic transactions that make up the whole health care enchilada.

How Clinician Educators Can Give Effective Feedback

Feedback is often an area that breaks down under the rigors and pressure of clinical activity. Clinician educators Pete Hannon and Kathleen Timme introduce a methodology that can provide insight, inspire goal setting, and help improve clinical performance.