The shortage of healthcare staff is growing more acute. Hope for a quick bounce-back to a pre-pandemic “normal” has all but faded away. As organizations continue to scramble to adjust to the current reality, leaders may want to give thought to ways they can improve their work environments and attract/retain staff over the long-term. Dr. Adrienne Boissy, Chief Medical Officer at Qualtrics recommends serving up “Joy Pie” and focusing on rebuilding trust with staff.
Joy Pie
In a blog post, Dr Boissy shared something she called a “joy pie”.
“At some point, I was thinking about a career shift and was asking myself what role or job title would fit,” wrote Dr. Boissy. “And I found myself going in circles. I was asking the wrong question. One day I sat down, drew a circle, and divided it into pie slices based on what a life filled with joy could look like.”
This is what she came up with:
Dr. Boissy wants all of us in healthcare to chase joy and bring more of it into our lives. She encourages everyone to go through the exercise of creating their own joy pie and use it as a guide.
In an interview with Healthcare IT Today, Dr. Boissy had this to say about how her joy pie applies to healthcare: “When you ask how it applies to healthcare? Well, I think some of the pain that we see in healthcare today is people may not take the time to know what their joy is. And it isn’t just their workplace.”
I am going to bet that the joy pie for clinicians will not have things like “administrative tasks”, “documentation”, or “more barriers to caring for patients” on it. In fact, healthcare organizations would be doing themselves a favor if they put themselves in the shoes of their clinical staff and created a joy pie. By doing this, organizations would be better able to focus on the things that truly matter to their staff which in turn will improve staff morale and ultimately retention.
Rebuilding Trust
Another way that organizations can improve their workplace and retain staff in the long-term is by rebuilding trust.
“Trust. It’s such a precious, fragile thing for patients and our employees,” said Dr. Boissy. “I recently started thinking about trust as an organization’s ability to keep its promises to patients and people over time. To be trusted, you have to be consistent over time, meaning you can’t break 18 promises day one, and then fulfill them all the next day.”
Dr. Boissy, sees three pillars to building trust between staff and healthcare organizations:
- Teamwork. “We will partner with you in how we make decisions and how we deliver care”
- Empathy. “We will care for you as a person”
- Communication. “Communication in healthcare is often tied to safety. Serious failures and safety often result from lack of communication, so I’m going to make two promises there. We’ll keep you safe and we will communicate effectively with you.”
These statements remind me of a leadership training course I took many years ago. In that course, we were warned about the say-do gap. The larger the gap between what leaders say and what they do/what the organization does, the less trustworthy they will be.
Taking a Long-term View
The staffing challenge shows no signs of ending soon, so rather than focusing on band-aid short term solutions, healthcare organizations may be better served by taking a long-term view and addressing systemic issues. Issues of trust. Issues of forcing clinicians to practice assembly-line healthcare (ie: no joy).
Watch the interview with Dr. Adrienne Boissy to learn:
- How healthcare organizations around the country are keeping patients at the center
- What “operationalizing empathy” means and how it can be achieved
- Why respecting patient preferences is key to earning their trust
Learn more about Qualtrics by visiting their website: https://www.qualtrics.com/
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