What exactly is the value of experience? Will a good mentor help improve safety? How can you measure mentor engagement at the organizational level? Today's episode explores the role of mentorship in safety culture.Key Points:-Witn...

How does the administrative wing respond to scrutiny? We are wired to have a fight or flight response, but surely there is a better way for managers to handle pressure? Today's podcast looks at examples of great managers who kept a pulse on the...

How does your organization celebrate retirement? It's not a typical interview question, but perhaps it should be: How we treat the people who have given years of their lives to the organization speaks volumes about how we value everyone else.&n...

How can we care for strangers if we do not care for each other? This episode looks at some of the best and worst charitable policies in the workplace and examines how safety culture can be elevated and restored during difficult times.Key...

How much do you trust your coworkers to watch your patients during lunch?This question is an often overlooked key indicator of safety culture. Nurses are possessive of "their" patients and this episode explores reasons and symptoms of lu...

Do you ever hear coworkers say, "Someone should fix that"? Have you ever wished Marie Kondo would come to your healthcare facility and tidy up? This episode looks at the physical environment as a sign of safety culture.Key Points:...

What is the intersection between safety and security? This episode shares some of my adventures at the bedside and explores opportunities to strengthen safety culture with best practices in security.Key Points:-Violence is prevale...

Everyone wants to believe that we treat our patients like family. But is it possible to prove it? Today's episode provides a quick auditing method to identify whether you have a family-friendly organization.Key Points:-Family Supp...

Efficient throughput and end of life care work at opposite ends of the spectrum. How does your end of life care reflect your safety culture? Today's episode explores ways to track the quality of end of life care and assess your facility's safet...

How should we respond to voluntary reporting? What can we do when our scientific approach to the study of errors becomes as dehumanizing as the culture that caused the error? This episode discusses non-mandatory reporting by turning the lens of...

Have you ever questioned the credibility of your safety culture survey? So many safety culture assessments describe vague things to avoid, but how can you tell if you have it? This season, we're sharing the Top 10 Signs that your healthcare org...

As the holidays approach, I'm revisiting the subject of what matters most to patients. This episode discusses the discharge process, length of stay, and outcome metrics that can serve as a compass for other quality measures.Key Points:-...

Did you hear about the redesign of the nurse manager role at Advocate Health? This episode discusses the six insights gleaned from three simple questions that just might save the nurse manager role.Key Points:-Ask the frontline-Mutu...

Important notices are common in healthcare, but opportunities for feedback can be hard to find. Yet, communication about problems is essential to a robust patient safety program. This episode looks at changes in technology that could improve sa...

Big Pharma spends billions of dollars on advertising that teaches the public how to say the names of their products. While millions of people live with hypertension, many of them cannot remember the name of their diagnosis or what it means. Thi...

Have you ever noticed how admission orders can be corrected, but a faulty discharge is nearly impossible to correct? Today's episode explores fake deaths, inaccurate discharges, and how to begin solving for resurrection errors in healthcare.

What can a con-man teach us about patient safety? Sometimes normal human reactions are just what is needed to breach protocol and result in harm. Today's episode explores the relationship between the perfect heist and safety culture.Key Poi...

Infectious disease fascinates me. When the State of Texas offers a free certification program in pandemic preparedness, including courses in epidemiology and infectious disease, I'm eager to sign up. Tune in to hear some of what I loved, what I...

Have you noticed how busy the clinic waiting rooms are becoming? As the largest living generation retires from providing care and seeks to receive it, our primary care models are experiencing new challenges. This episode seeks to focus our effo...

Have you ever been asked to sign that you'll pay whatever is "leftover" from your bill -- without knowing the total? This episode uses a risk approach to discuss the expectation that patients must promise to pay to an infinite and undefinable c...

Is it possible that one of our top safety interventions could increase the risk of patient harm? Why do some huddles seem so fruitful while others fall short? This episode shares 5 pitfalls of the typical staff huddle with tips on how ...

Does healthcare improvement sometimes feel like an impossible task? This episode looks at ways to refresh more than the data, but also our outlook and understanding, through an analytical approach.Key Points:-Time to give up?-Human ...

Have you noticed there are a lot of companies diving into primary care and then quickly exiting--or how many of these ventures carry the term "health" in their title rather than "healthcare"? This episode explores the dichotomy of healthcare th...

Have you ever experienced unintended consequences in your efforts to improve healthcare quality? Is there a better way to find solutions to persistent problems? This episode applies the principles of Precision Medicine -- with its individualize...

Patient Decision-Making is supposed to be the goal, but just defining it can cause a heated argument. What prevents it from happening, and how can we overcome those barriers? This episode uncovers a missing piece in patient decision-making, and...