Educated at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and trained at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Harvard fellowship in Palliative Care Education and Practice, Jennifer K. Clark, MD, has been in the world of healthcare for more than 20 years. With Med-Peds training and board certification in the subspecialty of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Dr. Clark is a physician and healthcare delivery consultant serving in various roles as a clinician educator, administrator and innovator at the local, national and international levels. When not serving in her volunteer role at Clarehouse, Tulsa Oklahoma’s home for the dying, Dr. Clark teaches at The University of Tulsa and collaborates with various organizations dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to human flourishing. Recently, she began the process of authoring a book on the power of suffering. 

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Clark shares insights from research she recently published on leadership loneliness in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Excellence. She delves into the ways that leader loneliness creates a self-reinforcing cycle in which isolation leads to self-devaluation, attempts to compensate through more work and less sleep, which then further compromises connection. As a result, says Dr. Clark, they become less effective and resilient as leaders, decreasing the efficacy of their teams and lowering organizational resilience. Like burnout in clinicians, leader loneliness results from structural elements that can be addressed through deliberate connection and positive organizational design.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Stryker.

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Geiger talks about the need to support nurses holistically through an approach that Ingenovis calls ACT, which stands for Advocacy, Career, and Tools. Based on interdisciplinary research, Dr. Geiger and her team built the approach as a means of combatting burnout and building resilience at both the structural and individual levels. By advocating for what nurses and other clinicians need at the policy level, supporting their career advancement, and providing tools and resources that teach individual wellbeing, Dr. Geiger hopes to bolster the nursing field and keep more nurses working in roles that offer professional fulfillment and personal wellbeing.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Vocera, part of Stryker.

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Mr. Forti shares the science of autonomic downregulation as a focal point for individual wellbeing. While he is an advocate for system change, he believes that those in the healing profession also have a moral obligation to care for their personal wellbeing, given the critical nature of the work they do and the proven links between wellbeing and patient care outcomes. At Hospital for Special Surgery, Mr. Forti created a program that teaches the science behind autonomic downregulation as well as simple practices such as sleep, breathwork, alcohol-abstention, gratitude and nutrition that support heart-rate variability (HRV), a key measure of wellbeing. To date, more than 700 clinicians have completed the training.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Vocera, now part of Stryker.

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Dr. Sexton talks about his team’s focus on providing accessible, evidence-based wellbeing practice to healthcare team members across the country. His five-part training covers gratitude, work-life balance, self-compassion, awe and wonder, and group-level wellbeing. The approach mixes didactic learning on the science behind wellbeing practices as well as time to put the concepts into practice. Dr. Sexton believes that evidence-based, individually-focused wellbeing practices are an essential complement to broader efforts to transform system factors that cause burnout and distress.

In this episode, Dr. Harry and I talk about the principles of cognitive load theory and how they apply to the practice of medicine. We discuss individual, team, and systems approaches to managing and minimizing cognitive load by removing extraneous load from system processes and technologies. We talk about the need to bring human factors engineering science and principles into healthcare so that leaders can work with the cognitive capacities of team members, and free up their finite resources for the most human-centered tasks and relationships. Finally, Dr. Harry shares insights into how leaders at every level can contribute to team member and patient safety by prioritizing an understanding of cognitive capacity and designing accordingly.

Dr. Liz Harry is a leader who cares greatly.

In this episode, Dr. Ofri and I talk about an article she recently published in the New Yorker titled, “The Curious Side Effects of Medical Transparency.” We delve into how the act of exposing medical notes to patients necessarily changes their purpose and their content, and how that, in turn, changes the thinking processes of clinicians. We talk about how art and expression are both integral to and separate from the art and science of medicine. Finally, Dr. Ofri offers advice to rising clinicians about how to separate their responsibilities from their identities to support sustainable practice.

Dr. Danielle Ofri is a leader who cares greatly.

In this episode, Dr. Fisher and I talk about how he came to medicine and his experience of burnout, depression, and disillusionment in his early career. That experience led him to take a deep dive into ancient wisdom traditions, but with a scientist’s mind. We look at the seven traits of the heart (steadiness, wisdom, openness, wholeness, courage, lightness and warmth) and how bringing these into healthcare practice creates presence, connection, and, ultimately, healing.

Dr. Jonathan Fisher is a leader who cares greatly.

In this episode, Dr. Rushton and I talk about the concept of values discordance, and what happens when a person perceives their personal or professional values to be out of alignment with their organization’s values. We look at the ways values play out in an organization – through leadership, decision making, and budgeting. We dig into the link between values and moral injury, and how ethics considerations need to be a central component of leaders’ wellbeing and leadership strategies. And Dr. Rushton lays out a structure for how leaders can safeguard ethics and values through leadership and safety infrastructure to support expectations and accountability, practice integration, continuous improvement, and competency building.

In this episode, Dr. DeChant and Liz Boehm talk about what’s different about workplace transformation in the trailing edge of the COVID-19 pandemic. We look at the need to rethink workload as an antidote to burnout, digging deeper than the concept of exhaustion into the causes of cynicism and inefficacy. This means delving into concepts such as respect, values, and community connection. Dr. DeChant talks about management concepts such as LEAN and what it takes to apply these in ways that solve for burnout rather than contributing to it. We touch on leadership burnout and how leaders can care for their own resilience and wellbeing and then lead others on a path toward joy and wellbeing at work.

In this episode, Mr. Feist and I talk about the factors that led to Dr. Breen’s death by suicide in 2020. Chief among these was a fear of losing her medical license if it became known that she had needed mental health support. This legacy is what has led the Foundation to launch a campaign to eliminate intrusive mental health questions from healthcare professional licensure and credentialing processes, a change that will help reduce the stigma that currently exists in healthcare around seeking mental health support. This change is beginning to happen at healthcare institutions and in state licensing boards across the country and represents a simple yet meaningful change to creating safer healthcare workplaces for team members and patients alike.