University of Utah’s Support Services makes learning a part of their routine. Director Dustin Banks considers his book club the most important meeting he attends. Why? Because it brings together Support Services’ diverse leadership group — customer service, hospital operators, environmental services, volunteers, interpreters and security — to learn and grow as a team.
Ari Weinzweig, CEO and cofounder of Zingerman’s gourmet food company, spoke at U of U Heath’s Leadership Development Institute (LDI) this past March. Weinzweig argues the power of belief – and our individual ability and freedom change our beliefs – is the answer to unlocking our personal and organizational potential.
As Utah’s first graduate medical director of quality and safety, hospitalist Ryan Murphy has a big job: prepare physicians to transform health care. Like any good student, Murphy hit the books to understand how to lead this tall order. Here he shares three insights from one of his favorite leadership books.
Claire Ciarkowski is on a journey to reduce unnecessary labs for inpatients at University of Utah Health. As a junior faculty member, she volunteered to work on the project when it didn’t sound exciting. But she is changing culture by asking the hard questions and delivering better care to patients at a lower cost. Accelerate’s Mari Ransco asked what she has learned.
Accelerate frequently chronicles the hard work of building and nurturing teams because we believe that real teams are the antidote to the chaos of modern medicine (in the words of Dr. Tom Lee). Here, we highlight a necessary ingredient of high-performing teams: motivation.
Drawing from psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s Elephant and the Rider metaphor, Utah's Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton explains why emotions are critical to motivating change in health care. Behavioral economics, it appears, may provide the direction we need.
University of Utah Health was an early adopter of bundled payments. Accelerate’s Mari Ransco sat down with Ryan VanderWerff, one of the first in our health system to participate in payment innovation, to learn firsthand what it takes to lead a team in turbulent times.
Improvement in patient experience is often the hardest part of managers’ jobs. It takes consistent work engaging your team. There are no shortcuts. In this series, we’ll be sharing lessons learned the hard way from people working on the front lines to deliver care. In this post, specialty clinics director Kirk Hughs gives practical advice on looking beyond the percentile in your patient experience data.
Rounding–the act of connecting with patients and staff–is a leadership best practice. While few find rounding easy to start, those who master it are hooked. It is a daily habit that improves patient care, experience and engages the team. Susan Clark and her medical director, Dr. Dana DeWitt, have taken the practice one step further by rounding together as a leadership dyad, resulting in a more connected and authentic team.
What if a patient described their care team as “incredibly competent, experienced and collaborative”*? Those are the adjectives used by a patient to describe their surgery at South Jordan Health Center. As the nurse manager of South Jordan’s surgical services, Brent Klev works to ensure that every patient has that experience. Here, Klev shares three ways he fosters a culture of teamwork through shared purpose.
We begin every Accelerate interview by asking about a person’s intrinsic motivation to work in health care, lead a team, or make a change. In other words, we always start with “why.”
The Effective Communicator is back to answer your troublesome communication questions. This week: how to craft a compelling story.
