Craig Clapper - Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare

If you enjoyed this book, discover your next great read with the following excerpt.

FOR MORE THAN 30 years, Press Ganey has dedicated itself to reducing patient suffering by helping improve the safety, quality, and experience of care. To perform this work, we rely every day on the great dedication, passion, and enthusiasm of our 1,200 associates, for which were immeasurably grateful. We also benefit from the outstanding leadership of Pat Ryan, our executive chair, and Joe Greskoviak, our CEO and president, both of whom live our values and challenge us to help our partners consistently meet patients and caregivers needs. Thank you, Pat and Joe, for the inspiration you bring.

When we first proposed this book to Patricia Cmielewski, Press Ganeys chief administrative officer, she instantly recognized the value it would have for our industry. Thank you, Patti, for always providing such great inspiration and support for our thought leadership projects. Likewise, this book would not exist without the efforts of Gregg DiPietro, Press Ganeys senior vice president of marketing, who shepherded the book through the publication process. Thank you, Gregg!

The editors would also like to recognize each of the chapter authors for their commitment to the project. Somehow, each of these experts found a bit of extra time in their already full days to work on thisgetting up a little earlier, going to bed a little later, and reading and writing between meetings. Thank you to Matt Turner, who consistently accepts every challenge presented to him with grace and tenacity; to Ingrid Summers, who challenges us to think differently in all aspects of our work; to Lynn Ehrmantraut, whose dedication to improving patient and employee experiences has defined her incredible career; to Shannon Vincent, who plays a huge role in shaping the strategy and client deliverables for Press Ganeys Workforce Solutions group; to Eric Heckerson, who brings modern adult-learning insights to our team; to Brad Pollins, who has reshaped the way we think about leadership development; to Kristopher Morgan, who prioritizes the science of our work to ensure reliability and validity for our clients; to Stephanie Weimer, who travels tirelessly to provide insights and recommendations to our clients on how to transform their cultures; and to Dave Shinsel, who drives our clients and our people to new heights with his coaching and leadership.

We also wish to recognize and thank Christy Dempsey and Mary Jo Assi, whose efforts are shaping nursing practice and culture around the world. Thank you to Chrissy Daniels, who challenges us to consider all points along the care continuum; and to Deirdre Mylod for developing a framework that helps us address burnout, one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today. Thank you to Craig Clapper and Steve Kreiser, safety experts who are saving countless lives by helping organizations move closer to Zero Harm. Finally, thank you to Rachel Biblow for helping healthcare leaders think holistically, break down silos, and truly transform healthcare.

In addition, we wish to acknowledge the following individuals and organizations for graciously sharing their time, stories, experiences, and insights: Advocate Aurora Health; Cleveland Clinic; Hartford HealthCare; Inspira Health; Intermountain Healthcare; Dr. Thomas Howell and Mayo Clinic; MultiCare Health System; Dr. Patrick J. Cawley and MUSC Health; Nationwide Childrens Hospital; Northwell Health; Novant Health; Dr. Virginia Casey and OrthoCarolina; OSF HealthCare; Dani Monroe and Partners HealthCare; Providence St. Joseph Health; Royal Bank of Canada; Angelique Richard and Rush University Medical Center; Salem Health; Seattle Childrens Hospital; Sentara Healthcare; Tidelands Health; Janet L. Christie and UF Health Shands; University of Tennessee Medical Center; Julie Kennedy Oehlert and Vidant Health; Washington Health System; and Yale New Haven Health System.

We were able to complete this project because of the hard work and direction provided by Diana Mahoney, director of content strategy, and Audrey Doyle, senior editorial manager, both of Press Ganey. Diana curates our thought leadership and ensures that everything we do is compelling, connected, and readable. As a talented writer who is passionately committed to our mission, Audrey performed the heavy lifting on this project, helping less experienced authors find their voice and more experienced authors tighten their messages. Both Diana and Audrey ensured that this project moved forward and stayed on deadline.

This is the third book project weve completed with our editor, Seth Schulman, whom we now nearly consider a member of the Press Ganey family. Seth and his colleague, Rachel Gostenhofer, masterfully knit the component parts of this book together to ensure that the final narrative was clear, cohesive, and powerful. Finally, we wish to acknowledge Casey Ebro, executive editor at McGraw-Hill. By recognizing the importance of this project as well as previous ones, she has helped advance our mission to improve healthcare. Thank you, Casey!

Martin Wright

An engaged and resilient workforce is essential for achieving robust safety, quality, and patient experience outcomes. To catalyze high performance, healthcare organizations must prioritize workforce engagement, accelerating improvement, creating alignment, and fostering an engaged culture.

THE HIGH-PERFORMING EXECUTIVE team of a large health system had gathered for its organizations annual strategy retreat. Although the organization was doing well, passions sometimes ran high on the team, leading to heated debates and disagreements. The decision-making process was sometimes opaque, and behind-the-scenes maneuvering often prevented true collaboration. Wishing to cultivate greater trust among team members, strengthen relationships, and improve communication, organizers of the retreat had devised a new team-building activity. They had asked attendees to each bring a significant personal item and discuss its meaning and value with the group. Some leaders brushed off the exercise, bringing mundane objects whose superficial meanings allowed for little personal transparency or vulnerability. But the organizations chief operating officer (COO) brought a memorable object, attached to an even more memorable story.

Some in the organization perceived this COO as aloof, disconnected from the organizations mission, and unwilling to listen. Those who knew her and worked closely with her respected her work, appreciated her grasp of operations, and admired her understanding of the organization, even when they disagreed with her. When asked to discuss her item, the COO displayed a gold trophy depicting a basketball player. Many in the room, having seen the trophy on her desk at work, had assumed it belonged to her son, but in fact it was her older brothers from when he was a kid. About a decade earlier, the COO explained, her brother had passed away after a bout with cancer. Although he had been sick for a few years, the end had come suddenly and taken the family by surprise. I had been busy at the time building my career, the COO said, and I hadnt been paying as much attention to him as I should have. He was always the strong one, the star athlete. Even when he got sick, it didnt seem like he needed me much. But in a journal of his that we found, he wrote that he felt so lonely because of his illness, cut off from the rest of the world. If I had been more sensitive and a better sister, maybe he wouldnt have felt that way. She was crying; everyone was. The COO went on to describe how her brother lives on in her memorythat she does her work out of deference to him. Its because of him that Im passionate about healthcare, the COO said, and that I do everything in my power to advance this organizations mission each and every day.1