In her five years at University of Utah Health as hospitalist, educator, and medical director of AIM-A and WP5, Karli Edholm led amazing amounts of impactful work. She trained future leaders and improved the safety, experience, and cost of an inpatient stay. Here she shares her lessons for leading and staying focused on improvement: start with your own frustration.
Charles Saltzman, chair of orthopaedics, believes that academic practice is about passion, not just intelligence. He tells Accelerate about what he’s learned while training and leading some of the most talented physicians in the country. There’s a common thread among the greats: They are drawn to academic work because they feel they can make a difference.
We jumped at the opportunity to interview best-selling author Greg McKeown when he visited U of U Health last November. We were even more excited when professor and chair of the department of surgery Sam Finlayson agreed to lead the conversation. Listen (or read) the interview to learn the why, how and what of Essentialism.
In the new series Book Club for Busy People, Accelerate shares highlights of books we’re hearing about from the community. First up: how thinking about others’ needs strengthens teams and increases civility in The Outward Mindset.
Leaders embody U of U Health’s focus on patient-centered care, respect for people, and continued improvement. Recently, Jessica Rivera, Carissa Christensen, Sue Childress, and Tracy Farley described their efforts to deliver a better health care experience for patients by taking care of their teams. In advance of individual articles from each leader, below are four big takeaways that can be put into action today.
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.
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.
Dr. Kyle Bradford Jones is back, this time with baseball analogies. Team success means having a team of contributors instead of one MVP. Jones writes that specific factors—positivity and team identity—are critical to nurturing a successful team.
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: compelling vision.
Positive beliefs build energy, caring and creativity and can increase resilience and influence bottom line results.* As senior director of endoscopy, medical and specialty clinics, Cynthia McComber believes that meaning is necessary for leading change. McComber talked with Accelerate’s Chrissy Daniels about how to build connected, authentic and resilient teams.
We all love the “great save” stories. But heroism in the context of health care improvement isn’t always so exciting. When you’re pursuing more reliable, more patient-centered, and more affordable health care, providers have to rely on a different kind of gratification.
Want to be part of a thriving culture? Feedback is key. Director of ENT and dental clinics Kirk Hughs asked over 500 University of Utah Health leaders to share what makes feedback effective. Their top two? Timely and sincere feedback.
