Crack is whack, son.

Let's huddle and regroup
 
When executive leadership tasked me with transforming the care delivery approach at our health system, I knew that it'd take quite the rapport in order to land successfully. Knowing the importance of face time, I spent the first 2-3 months (summer) getting to know the unit staff members. From the unit manager to the nurses and the care partners (medical assistants), connecting with everyone was important. What they didn't know is that with these "passer-by" check-ins, we were using them for different purposes. They were casually getting to know fellow staff members while I was building rapport, namely trust and respect. This approach has worked wonders in our progress to improve our clinical communication, leveraging a soft power approach with an assertive mindset. At any point we shy from our objective, I steer us back on target right immediately through positive reinforcement. So what exactly are we doing? Changing the way clinicians communicate in the hospital. Instead of taking a reactive approach, or waiting until it's too late, we are communicating about patient risks before something bad happens. Genius, right? Not really. I actually am completely dumb-founded that no one has ever done this before. So I've now established certain times of the day where all care providers update one another on their patients' progress. You could say opening the communication lines. I've also leveraged an iterative change model, what's called "hyper-change". Given the tight turnaround time that our board is expecting results, I knew that we couldn't use your traditional single dependent variable approach when evaluating patient outcomes. So we implement small changes to our model every Monday morning. They are expected, yet realistic, and staffers are surprisingly okay with this. More on provider communication later...

Andre 6 months later...

Last I spoke of Andre, he and I had been going through some growing pains. A quick recap of the story-- after being matched for 7 months (at that time), he began stealing cash from my car (I had planted cash on 6 consecutive weeks). I gave him 2 options: confess and volunteer for a month or not confess and volunteer for 3 months straight. And so that's what we did, once per week, volunteer at the Nashville Rescue Mission serving either lunch or dinner. I made him work off, in hours, the equivalent of every dollar he stole, based on minimum wage. My observations were fascinating. When Andre is put into a situation where maturity and/or leadership is necessary, he steps up to the plate... nearly every time. To ensure that he learned a major life lesson here, I had him talk with some of the residents of the mission, and I don't mean sugar-coated, superficial small-talk. Nerp. This kid knows more at 13 than I did at 18, in so many ways. So I told these guys to share their stories, straight-talk. Tell him of the cocaine addiction that drained your bank account, the armed robbery that landed you in prison for 8 years, the gang affiliation that left you partially disabled. Yea, share those juicy stories. And so they did, along with the consequences of their actions. He learned so much from this that he asked if we could continue volunteering once per month. Ataboy. More than anything, I want him to know that we all make mistakes, but learning from your actions is what makes you a better person.