Today we’re talking about transforming toxic culture, whether on your floor, in your unit, or in your department. How do we change unit culture via point of care conversations? You can teach people all the speaking skills in the world, but if they don’t care about the other people in the room or don’t think there’s a possibility they aren’t perfectly right, it won’t take. This topic was featured in a keynote of the same name by our colleague Laura Rock at SESAM2025 this summer.

Workout of the week: Share your point of view, and follow it with a genuine, open inquiry into the other person’s perspective.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

Leadership Coaching from Jenny Rudolph: https://harvardmedsim.org/personal-leadership-coaching-with-jenny-rudolph/

Today we’re talking about transforming toxic culture, whether on your floor, in your unit, or in your department. How do we change unit culture via point of care conversations? You can teach people all the speaking skills in the world, but if they don’t care about the other people in the room or don’t think there’s a possibility they aren’t perfectly right, it won’t take. This topic was featured in a keynote of the same name by our colleague Laura Rock at SESAM2025 this summer. Workout of the week: Share your point of view, and follow it with a genuine, open inquiry into the other person’s perspective. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822 Leadership Coaching from Jenny Rudolph: https://harvardmedsim.org/personal-leadership-coaching-with-jenny-rudolph/

Curious Now #14: Transforming Toxic Culture One Conversation at a Time

A nurse preceptor has just watched a trainee commit a serious error despite hours of lecture, reading, and hands on training. In spite of herself, she starts to heat up, much like the more severe clinical educators who trained her years ago. “Why can’t you just get this right?”

An ICU attending asks her resident to call her if a patient’s hematocrit drops under a certain value. Despite this agreement, and despite the patient deteriorating, the resident never calls. “Are you an idiot? Why didn’t you call me?”

In these moments, how do we reset ourself to a place of care, curiosity, and compassion? How do we model a better culture of learning? How do we have our judgment, instead of our judgment having us?

In “Curious Now with Jenny Rudolph,” a social scientist takes on the hidden structures that shape our behavior, culture, communication, and learning in healthcare.

In this interactive podcast, Jenny Rudolph, PhD, FSSH, will help listeners approach the thoughts, feelings, and judgments underlying their reactions in a psychologically safer manner, helping us to better connect with curiosity and compassion to the people around us, especially when we feel that they’ve done something “wrong.” This podcast will include weekly challenges to examine your own thinking, including follow-up with listeners and experts about their experience on the journey to Good Judgment.

Jenny Rudolph has made a career exploring what makes clinicians, healthcare organizations, and health professions training programs tick. Underneath the surface of intelligent, capable people who care about doing their best are hidden patterns that interfere with how they perform. Hierarchy, ego, communication glitches, resilience, power, professional learning, and how learning happens all flow downstream into creating actions that work and actions that don’t.

Jenny found out the hard way that being too certain can get you in trouble. Demoted from third to second grade for poor academic performance when she arrived in Jaipur, India as an eight-year-old, she realized she had better get curious about how her new school and culture ran, and that curiosity has remained with her ever since.

Jenny now works with clinicians around the world to help them develop their own love of that little dopamine drip of rewarding surprise when you find out something new about your colleagues and how they think. Whether trying to figure out a diagnosis, discovering what a learner is thinking, or upping your own clinical mastery, getting Curious Now is the solution.

Curious Now on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP?si=890ed4b02bfe4838

Curious Now on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

--------------------
Founded in 1993, the Center for Medical Simulation was one of the world's first healthcare simulation centers and continues to be a global leader in the field. Simulation training at CMS gives healthcare providers a new and enlightening perspective on how to handle real medical situations. Through high-fidelity scenarios that simulate genuine crisis management situations, the CMS experience can open new chapters in the level of healthcare quality that participants provide. Find out more and apply for CMS simulation workshops at www.harvardmedsim.org.

Science

A nurse preceptor has just watched a trainee commit a serious error despite hours of lecture, reading, and hands on training. In spite of herself, she starts to heat up, much like the more severe clinical educators who trained her years ago. “Why can’t you just get this right?” An ICU attending asks her resident to call her if a patient’s hematocrit drops under a certain value. Despite this agreement, and despite the patient deteriorating, the resident never calls. “Are you an idiot? Why didn’t you call me?” In these moments, how do we reset ourself to a place of care, curiosity, and compassion? How do we model a better culture of learning? How do we have our judgment, instead of our judgment having us? In “Curious Now with Jenny Rudolph,” a social scientist takes on the hidden structures that shape our behavior, culture, communication, and learning in healthcare. In this interactive podcast, Jenny Rudolph, PhD, FSSH, will help listeners approach the thoughts, feelings, and judgments underlying their reactions in a psychologically safer manner, helping us to better connect with curiosity and compassion to the people around us, especially when we feel that they’ve done something “wrong.” This podcast will include weekly challenges to examine your own thinking, including follow-up with listeners and experts about their experience on the journey to Good Judgment. Jenny Rudolph has made a career exploring what makes clinicians, healthcare organizations, and health professions training programs tick. Underneath the surface of intelligent, capable people who care about doing their best are hidden patterns that interfere with how they perform. Hierarchy, ego, communication glitches, resilience, power, professional learning, and how learning happens all flow downstream into creating actions that work and actions that don’t. Jenny found out the hard way that being too certain can get you in trouble. Demoted from third to second grade for poor academic performance when she arrived in Jaipur, India as an eight-year-old, she realized she had better get curious about how her new school and culture ran, and that curiosity has remained with her ever since. Jenny now works with clinicians around the world to help them develop their own love of that little dopamine drip of rewarding surprise when you find out something new about your colleagues and how they think. Whether trying to figure out a diagnosis, discovering what a learner is thinking, or upping your own clinical mastery, getting Curious Now is the solution. Curious Now on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP?si=890ed4b02bfe4838 Curious Now on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822 -------------------- Founded in 1993, the Center for Medical Simulation was one of the world's first healthcare simulation centers and continues to be a global leader in the field. Simulation training at CMS gives healthcare providers a new and enlightening perspective on how to handle real medical situations. Through high-fidelity scenarios that simulate genuine crisis management situations, the CMS experience can open new chapters in the level of healthcare quality that participants provide. Find out more and apply for CMS simulation workshops at www.harvardmedsim.org.

A nurse preceptor has just watched a trainee commit a serious error despite hours of lecture, reading, and hands on training. In spite of herself, she starts to heat up, much like the more severe clinical educators who trained her years ago. “Why can’t you just get this right?”

An ICU attending asks her resident to call her if a patient’s hematocrit drops under a certain value. Despite this agreement, and despite the patient deteriorating, the resident never calls. “Are you an idiot? Why didn’t you call me?”

In these moments, how do we reset ourself to a place of care, curiosity, and compassion? How do we model a better culture of learning? How do we have our judgment, instead of our judgment having us?

In “Curious Now with Jenny Rudolph,” a social scientist takes on the hidden structures that shape our behavior, culture, communication, and learning in healthcare.

In this interactive podcast, Jenny Rudolph, PhD, FSSH, will help listeners approach the thoughts, feelings, and judgments underlying their reactions in a psychologically safer manner, helping us to better connect with curiosity and compassion to the people around us, especially when we feel that they’ve done something “wrong.” This podcast will include weekly challenges to examine your own thinking, including follow-up with listeners and experts about their experience on the journey to Good Judgment.

Jenny Rudolph has made a career exploring what makes clinicians, healthcare organizations, and health professions training programs tick. Underneath the surface of intelligent, capable people who care about doing their best are hidden patterns that interfere with how they perform. Hierarchy, ego, communication glitches, resilience, power, professional learning, and how learning happens all flow downstream into creating actions that work and actions that don’t.

Jenny found out the hard way that being too certain can get you in trouble. Demoted from third to second grade for poor academic performance when she arrived in Jaipur, India as an eight-year-old, she realized she had better get curious about how her new school and culture ran, and that curiosity has remained with her ever since.

Jenny now works with clinicians around the world to help them develop their own love of that little dopamine drip of rewarding surprise when you find out something new about your colleagues and how they think. Whether trying to figure out a diagnosis, discovering what a learner is thinking, or upping your own clinical mastery, getting Curious Now is the solution.

Curious Now on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP?si=890ed4b02bfe4838

Curious Now on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

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Founded in 1993,&nbsp;the Center for Medical Simulation was one of the world's first healthcare simulation centers and continues to be a global leader in the field. Simulation training at&nbsp;CMS&nbsp;gives healthcare providers a new and enlightening perspective on how to handle real medical situations. Through high-fidelity scenarios that simulate genuine crisis management situations, the&nbsp;CMS&nbsp;experience can open new chapters in the level of healthcare quality that participants provide. Find out more and apply for CMS simulation workshops at www.harvardmedsim.org.

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Curious Now #14: Transforming Toxic Culture One Conversation at a Time

Curious Now #14: Transforming Toxic Culture One Conversation at a Time

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